DEA-C02 Storage and Data Protection Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  It immediately doubles the storage cost of the table.

  Why it's wrong here

  Zero-copy cloning avoids duplicating data by design. The new table shares the underlying storage blocks of the original until changes occur. Therefore, it does not double storage costs, allowing for efficient testing and development environments without incurring the expense of fully replicating large datasets for every cloned instance.

• ✓

  It incurs no additional storage cost at the time of cloning.

  Why this is correct

  Because zero-copy cloning is a metadata-only operation, no physical data is moved or copied. The new table references the same immutable micro-partitions as the source. Initial storage consumption is effectively zero, making this a highly efficient way to manage multiple environment versions without needing redundant data storage.

• ✗

  It creates a physical copy that only shares unchanged data.

  Why it's wrong here

  Cloning does not create a physical copy at all. The entire structure is virtual, based on pointers to existing micro-partitions. Data is only materialized or 'copied' in terms of storage impact when the user modifies the clone, causing the creation of new, independent versions of the modified data blocks.

• ✗

  It requires the user to re-cluster the clone to avoid costs.

  Why it's wrong here

  Re-clustering the clone is an optimization task for query performance, not a mechanism for managing storage costs. Re-clustering would actually cause data to be rewritten, which would lead to the clone consuming its own independent storage, thus negating the storage-saving benefits of the zero-copy architecture.