Connect Snowflake

The following fields are required when creating a Snowflake connection

Field	Description	Examples
Account	The Snowflake account to connect to. Take a look here to determine what the account field should look like based on your region.	✅ db5261993 or db5261993.east-us-2.azure   ❌ db5261993.eu-central-1.snowflakecomputing.com
Role	A mandatory field indicating what role should be assumed after connecting to Snowflake	transformer
Database	The logical database to connect to and run queries against.	analytics
Warehouse	The virtual warehouse to use for running queries.	transforming

Note: A crucial part of working with dbt atop Snowflake is ensuring that users (in development environments) and/or service accounts (in deployment to production environments) have the correct permissions to take actions on Snowflake! Here is documentation of some example permissions to configure Snowflake access.

Authentication methods

This section describes the different authentication methods for connecting dbt Cloud to Snowflake. Configure Deployment environment (Production, Staging, General) credentials globally in the Connections area of Account settings. Individual users configure their development credentials in the Credentials area of their user profile.

Username / Password

Available in: Development environments, Deployment environments

The Username / Password auth method is the simplest way to authenticate Development or Deployment credentials in a dbt project. Simply enter your Snowflake username (specifically, the login_name) and the corresponding user's Snowflake password to authenticate dbt Cloud to run queries against Snowflake on behalf of a Snowflake user.

Note: The schema field in the Developer Credentials section is a required field.

Snowflake username/password authentication

Snowflake MFA

Prerequisites:

• A development environment in a dbt Cloud project
• The Duo authentication app
• Admin access to Snowflake (if MFA settings haven't already been applied to the account)
• Admin (write) access to dbt Cloud environments

dbt Cloud supports Snowflake's multi-factor authentication (MFA) as another username and password option for increased login security. Snowflake's MFA support is powered by the Duo Security service.

• In dbt Cloud, set the following extended attribute in the development environment General settings page, under the Extended attributes section:

  authenticator: username_password_mfa

• To reduce the number of user prompts when connecting to Snowflake with MFA, enable token caching in Snowflake.

• Optionally, if users miss prompts and their Snowflake accounts get locked, you can prevent automatic retries by adding the following in the same Extended attributes section:

  connect_retries: 0

Configure the MFA username and password, and connect_retries in the development environment settings.

Key pair

Available in: Development environments, Deployment environments

The Keypair auth method uses Snowflake's Key Pair Authentication to authenticate Development or Deployment credentials for a dbt Cloud project.

1. After generating an encrypted key pair, be sure to set the rsa_public_key for the Snowflake user to authenticate in dbt Cloud:

   alter user jsmith set rsa_public_key='MIIBIjANBgkqh...';   

2. Finally, set the Private Key and Private Key Passphrase fields in the Credentials page to finish configuring dbt Cloud to authenticate with Snowflake using a key pair.

   • Note: Unencrypted private keys are permitted. Use a passphrase only if needed. Starting from dbt version 1.7, dbt introduced the ability to specify a private_key directly as a string instead of a private_key_path. This private_key string can be in either Base64-encoded DER format, representing the key bytes, or in plain-text PEM format. Refer to Snowflake documentation for more info on how they generate the key.

3. To successfully fill in the Private Key field, you must include commented lines. If you receive a Could not deserialize key data or JWT token error, refer to Troubleshooting for more info.

Example:

-----BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----
< encrypted private key contents here - line 1 >
< encrypted private key contents here - line 2 >
< ... >
-----END ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----

Snowflake keypair authentication

Snowflake OAuth

Available in: Development environments, Enterprise plans only

The OAuth auth method permits dbt Cloud to run development queries on behalf of a Snowflake user without the configuration of Snowflake password in dbt Cloud.

For more information on configuring a Snowflake OAuth connection in dbt Cloud, please see the docs on setting up Snowflake OAuth.

Configuring Snowflake OAuth connection

Configuration

To learn how to optimize performance with data platform-specific configurations in dbt Cloud, refer to Snowflake-specific configuration.

Custom domain URL

To connect to Snowflake through a custom domain (vanity URL) instead of the account locator, use extended attributes to configure the host parameter with the custom domain:

host: https://custom_domain_to_snowflake.com

This configuration may conflict with Snowflake OAuth when used with PrivateLink. IF users can't reach Snowflake authentication servers from a networking standpoint, please contact dbt Support to find a workaround with this architecture.

Troubleshooting

If you're receiving a Could not deserialize key data or JWT token error, refer to the following causes and solutions:

 Error: `Could not deserialize key data`

Possible cause and solution for the error "Could not deserialize key data" in dbt Cloud.

• This could be because of mistakes like not copying correctly, missing dashes, or leaving out commented lines.

Solution:

• You can copy the key from its source and paste it into a text editor to verify it before using it in dbt Cloud.

 Error: `JWT token`

Possible cause and solution for the error "JWT token" in dbt Cloud.

• This could be a transient issue between Snowflake and dbt Cloud. When connecting to Snowflake, dbt gets a JWT token valid for only 60 seconds. If there's no response from Snowflake within this time, you might see a JWT token is invalid error in dbt Cloud.
• The public key was not entered correctly in Snowflake.

Solutions

• dbt needs to retry connections to Snowflake.
• Confirm and enter Snowflake's public key correctly. Additionally, you can reach out to Snowflake for help or refer to this Snowflake doc for more info: Key-Based Authentication Failed with JWT token is invalid Error.