Cloud cost
Auto-suspend / resume minimum
Snowflake's default behavior of suspending an idle warehouse to stop billing it, and resuming it on the next query — with each resume billing at least 60 seconds regardless of how short the query is.
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Definition
Auto-suspend and auto-resume are both on by default: a warehouse suspends after its configured idle timeout and wakes automatically when the next query needs it. That's straightforwardly good for a workload with long gaps between queries.
It cuts the other way for a workload queried in frequent, short bursts, like a dashboard polling every couple of minutes. A short auto-suspend timeout against that pattern means suspending and resuming constantly, and every resume bills the 60-second minimum whether or not the query itself took anywhere close to that long. There's no single timeout that's right for every warehouse — it depends on the query pattern.
Where it shows up
Auto-suspend and auto-resume settings live in a Snowflake warehouse's own configuration, with the idle timeout set per warehouse by whoever administers it. The 60-second resume minimum is documented behavior, applied automatically every single time a suspended warehouse wakes to serve a new incoming query from any client.
What makes it expensive
This gets expensive fast: setting a short auto-suspend timeout against a workload queried in frequent, short bursts, like a dashboard polling every couple of minutes, forcing constant suspend-and-resume cycles that each bill the 60-second minimum on their own. Tuned that way, a mostly idle warehouse and a busy one can cost about the same.
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