Snowflake’s Cloning feature provides the ability to create azero-copyclone of tables, schemas, or entire databases. This means that the cloned object references the same underlying micro-partition data as the original, so no duplicate storage costs are incurred upon creation. Instead, Snowflake uses metadata pointers to reference the existing data. If changes occur in the original or cloned objects, Snowflake performs copy-on-write operations to maintain isolation while still optimizing storage. This cloning mechanism is extremely valuable for development, testing environments, analytics validation, and troubleshooting historical states. It is not a real-time backup tool; backup and restore are handled through Time Travel and Fail-safe. Cloning does not grant or manage permissions nor copy the entire Snowflake account; it works solely at the database, schema, and table object levels.

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