Explain Snowflake's virtual warehouses and their characteristics.

beginner

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Virtual warehouses are clusters of compute resources that execute queries and DML operations. They are:

Independent: Each warehouse operates independently without affecting others
Scalable: Can be resized (scaled up/down) or scaled out (multi-cluster)
Elastic: Can be suspended and resumed instantly
Concurrent: Multiple warehouses can access the same data simultaneously
Warehouse sizes: X-Small, Small, Medium, Large, X-Large, 2X-Large, 3X-Large, 4X-Large, 5X-Large, 6X-Large
Each size doubles the compute resources and cost of the previous size.

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