What is Amazon Redshift?
Amazon Redshift is a fully managed, petabyte scale data warehouse from AWS. With its Massively Parallel Processing architecture, Redshift analyzes large data volumes with standard SQL and delivers up to 3x better price performance than traditional data warehouses. The service is optimized for OLAP workloads and integrates seamlessly with BI tools like Tableau, Power BI, and QuickSight.
Redshift stores data in columnar format, which significantly accelerates analytical queries. Automatic compression reduces storage requirements by up to 4x. With RA3 nodes, Redshift separates compute from storage, allowing you to scale both resources independently.
Core Features
- Columnar Storage: Column based storage optimized for analytics queries
- Massively Parallel Processing: Distributed query execution across hundreds of nodes
- Redshift Spectrum: Query data directly in S3 without loading
- Concurrency Scaling: Automatic scaling during query peaks
- Machine Learning Integration: Predictions directly in SQL with Redshift ML
Typical Use Cases
Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
Consolidate data from various sources into a central data warehouse. Redshift integrates with ETL tools like AWS Glue and enables complex analytical queries across petabytes of data. BI teams can create dashboards and reports with familiar SQL tools.
Data Lake Analytics
With Redshift Spectrum, query data directly in Amazon S3 without loading it. Combine hot data in Redshift with cold data in the data lake for cost optimized analytics. Zero ETL integrations with Aurora and RDS enable real time analytics without data copying.
Machine Learning with SQL
Redshift ML enables using machine learning predictions directly in SQL queries. You create ML models with CREATE MODEL, AWS trains automatically via SageMaker Autopilot, and you call predictions via SQL functions.
Advantages
- Petabyte scale analytics with standard SQL
- Up to 75% cost savings through Reserved Instances
- Seamless integration with S3 data lakes
- No infrastructure management with Serverless
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with Amazon Redshift: data warehouse architecture, migration from on premises systems, ETL pipeline design with AWS Glue, performance tuning, and cost optimization.
Available Tiers & Options
Provisioned Clusters
- Predictable performance
- Reserved Instances up to 75% discount
- RA3 Nodes with Managed Storage
- Manual capacity planning
Redshift Serverless
- Automatic scaling
- No cluster management
- Pay only for used capacity
- Potentially higher costs with constant usage
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Amazon Redshift?
Amazon Redshift is a fully managed, petabyte scale data warehouse from AWS with Massively Parallel Processing architecture. It enables analysis of large data volumes with standard SQL and offers up to 3x better price performance than traditional data warehouses.
When should I use Redshift instead of RDS?
Use Redshift for analytical workloads like complex aggregations, historical data analysis, and business intelligence reporting. Use RDS for transactional workloads with frequent INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations.
What is the difference between Provisioned and Serverless?
Redshift Provisioned requires manual cluster configuration with predictable performance and costs. Redshift Serverless scales automatically based on workload without cluster management and is ideal for unpredictable workloads.
How does Redshift Spectrum work?
Redshift Spectrum enables querying data directly in Amazon S3 without loading it into Redshift. You define external tables in AWS Glue Data Catalog pointing to S3 data. Ideal for hot data in Redshift, cold data in S3.