DEA-C02 Storage and Data Protection Practice Question
A data engineer is designing a storage strategy for a Snowflake account that uses Enterprise Edition. The engineer needs to ensure that critical tables can be recovered for up to 90 days, while non-critical staging tables should minimize storage costs. Which two statements accurately describe Snowflake Time Travel and Fail-safe behavior for permanent tables? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse the retention limits and Fail-safe applicability between permanent and transient tables, especially assuming transient tables can use extended retention.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Permanent tables in Enterprise Edition can have a Time Travel retention period of up to 90 days.
Permanent tables in Enterprise Edition support up to 90 days of Time Travel retention, and Fail-safe adds a fixed 7-day period after Time Travel expires. These two features together provide a comprehensive recovery strategy for critical data. Transient tables are limited to 1 day of Time Travel and have no Fail-safe, making them unsuitable for long-term recovery needs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Fail-safe can be configured to extend beyond 7 days for permanent tables in Enterprise Edition.
Why it's wrong here
Fail-safe is a fixed 7-day period for permanent tables and cannot be configured or extended. It is not a user-accessible feature; only Snowflake Support can recover data from Fail-safe. This option misrepresents Fail-safe as a configurable setting, which it is not.
- ✗
Transient tables can have a Time Travel retention period of up to 90 days if the account is Enterprise Edition.
Why it's wrong here
Transient tables have a maximum Time Travel retention of 1 day, regardless of account edition. They do not support extended retention periods like permanent tables. This option incorrectly applies the permanent table limit to transient tables, which are designed for lower-cost, short-term data.
- ✓
Permanent tables in Enterprise Edition can have a Time Travel retention period of up to 90 days.
Why this is correct
In Snowflake Enterprise Edition, permanent tables support a maximum Time Travel retention of 90 days, configurable via DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS. This allows recovery of historical data for up to 90 days using AT or BEFORE clauses. This setting is ideal for critical tables requiring long recovery windows, but it increases storage costs because historical versions are retained.
- ✗
Time Travel retention for permanent tables can be set to 0 days to disable it, but Fail-safe still applies.
Why it's wrong here
Setting DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS to 0 disables Time Travel for a permanent table, but Fail-safe still provides 7 days of recovery for permanent tables. However, this statement is not entirely accurate because Fail-safe applies only after Time Travel expires, and with 0 days, Fail-safe begins immediately. But the question asks for accurate descriptions; this option is partially true but not one of the two best answers. The key inaccuracies: Fail-safe is not user-configurable, and the statement implies it applies, which is true, but the focus is on the two correct statements about maximum retention and Fail-safe duration.
- ✓
Fail-safe provides an additional 7 days of recovery beyond the Time Travel retention period for permanent tables.
Why this is correct
Fail-safe is a non-configurable period of 7 days that follows the Time Travel retention period for permanent tables. It allows Snowflake Support to recover data in the event of catastrophic failure, but it is not accessible to users. This ensures a safety net beyond Time Travel, but only for permanent tables in all editions.
About these practice questions
This DEA-C02 question is part of Courseiva's 229-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Snowflake exam blueprint
This DEA-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Snowflake certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DEA-C02 exam.