Answer: In the cloud services layer

According to Snowflake's official documentation and the community consensus with multiple upvoted comments referencing the documentation, Snowflake metadata is stored in the cloud services layer. This layer handles metadata management, authentication, infrastructure management, query optimization, and access control. The other options are incorrect: data files contain actual data, the virtual warehouse layer handles query execution, and remote storage layer stores table data and query results.

Author: LeetQuiz Editorial Team