SQL warehouse launch fails to start with "PERMISSION_DENIED"

Provide the owner with unrestricted cluster creation permissions or workspace admin permissions.

Written by manjunath.hebbar

Last published at: July 1st, 2025

Problem

When you attempt to start an SQL warehouse, you receive the following error. 

"Clusters are failing to launch. Cluster launch will be retried. Request to create a cluster failed with an exception: PERMISSION_DENIED: You are not authorized to create clusters. Please contact your administrator."

 

Cause

The issue occurs when the SQL warehouse owner does not have workspace admin privileges or permissions for unrestricted cluster creation.

 

Solution

  1. Verify the current owner of the SQL warehouse. 
  2. Have your workspace admin assign one of the following permissions to the warehouse owner:
    1. Unrestricted cluster creation permissions. For instructions, review the “Compute entitlements” section of the Manage entitlements (AWS | Azure | GCP) documentation. 
    2. Workspace admin privileges to the SQL warehouse owner. For instructions, review the “Assign the workspace admin role to a user” section of the Manage users (AWS | Azure | GCP) documentation.

 

If the warehouse owner’s permissions change in the future, you may need to follow these steps again. 

For more information on launching a SQL warehouse, refer to the Create a SQL warehouse (AWS | Azure | GCP) documentation.