Snowflake Key Pair Authentication
Coalesce supports Snowflake’s key pair authentication for connecting Development Workspaces and Environments to Snowflake instances. Both encrypted and un-encrypted private keys are supported. Encrypted keys have a corresponding passphrase that is required to use them, while un-encrypted keys can be used directly. While keys are allowed to be encrypted with an empty passphrase by Snowflake, this is not supported in Coalesce and will result in an error.
Before you begin, go through Snowflake’s key pair authentication steps to generate your keys and assign the public key to your Snowflake user.
Snowflake Key Pair New Workspace
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Select the Project you want to create the Workspace in.
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Click Create Workspace. You'll be taken to the Workspace creator.
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Give your Workspace a Name and Description(optional).
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Enter your Snowflake Account URL.
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Obtain your Snowflake URL, by opening the account selector in Snowflake.
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Change the Authentication Type to Key Pair.
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Enter your Snowflake Username , Private Key, Private Key Passphrase (if applicable), Role and Warehouse into their respective fields and Save. Click Test Connection to ensure this works as expected.
Adding Your Private KeyWhen entering your private key, make sure it's formatted properly. It must include the full private key including the lines BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY and END ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY.
-----BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----
...
-----END ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY----- -
You'll connect a repo to this Workspace. Your repository was connected during Project setup. Workspaces let you work on a branch. You will need to select a branch and commit to make a new branch. For example, if you want to create a branch off main, select main, then select the commit in main to create your branch from.
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Next, add Storage Locations and Storage Mappings to your Workspace. If you have any existing Storage Locations and Storage Mappings from Git, they will be listed here.
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Click Create Workspace. You've just created your Workspace. Get started by adding some data.
Snowflake Key Pair Existing Workspace
- Navigate to Build Settings > Environments/Development Workspaces.
- Select Edit, , on the Environment or Workspace that you want to connect to Snowflake using Key Pair Auth.
- In Edit Environment or Workspace > User Credentials, select Authentication Type as Key Pair .
- Enter your Snowflake Username , Private Key, Private Key Passphrase (if applicable), Role and Warehouse into their respective fields and Save. Click Test Connection to ensure this works as expected.

When entering your private key, make sure it's formatted properly. It must include the full private key including the lines BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY and END ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY.
-----BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----
...
-----END ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----