What is Redshift ?

Secure

Fully Managed

MPP Data Warehouse

Based on Postgres 8.0.2

SQL interface

3000$ Data Warehouse

Analytics on Large scale Datasets

Peta-byte scale

DemoRDS vs Redshift

Table Name Rows

LINEORDER 600,037,902

PART 1,400,000

CUSTOMER 3,000,000

SUPPLIER 1,000,000

DWDATE 2,556

How is Redshift so fast ?

1. Distributed Computing 2. Columnar Storage

3. Data Compression 4. Large Block StorageRaw Default storage

ByteDict External dict of unique values

Delta Difference between the values

Runlength Count of repetitive values

Text Repetitive words in long text

Block Size of 1Mb as opposed to smaller block sizes in RDBMS

Tuning

1. Sort Keys and Zone Maps● Amazon Redshift stores

columnar data in 1 MB disk blocks

● Min and Max values for each block are stored as part of the metadata - Zone Maps

● Helps in skipping over large numbers of blocks during table scans

Compound Sort Key

Interleaved Sort Key

Choosing a Sort Key

● Timestamp Column

● Range or Equality filtering on specific column

● Join Column

2. Distribution Key

Effect of distribution on query performance

Distribution Styles

Integration with other tools

● EMR

● RDS

● Spark

● ETL - SnapLogic,

Treasure data

Where not to use it ?

● Using it for something non-analytics○ It is not for OLTP operations

● When you have small queries like select * from <table>

● When you have constraints, indexes or table partitioning

● When you have many concurrent users accessing same

cluster○ Limit of 50 concurrent users

Gotchas

● Data loading into Redshift○ Only S3, DynamoDB, EMR and Data-Pipeline supported parallely

● Concurrent queries downgrades performance○ More load more latency

● Cluster resizing○ Read only mode while resizing

○ Does not easily scale up for dynamic workloads

● Multi-AZ deployments not supported○ Cluster unavailable until power and network access to the AZ are

restored

● Frequent Deletes & Updates

○ Every UPDATE = DELETE + INSERT

○ Vacuum to the rescue

● Can not apply compression after table is created

References

● http://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/welcome.html

● https://www.periscopedata.com/blog/redshift-and-rds-postgres-benchmarke

d.html

● http://blog.blazeclan.com/what-is-amazon-redshift-11-key-points-remember/

● https://redshiftuser.wordpress.com/

● http://engineering.thinknear.com/blog/2015/01/21/understanding-the-decisi

on-to-move-from-aws-emr-slash-hive-to-redshift/

● http://www.eshioji.co.uk/2013/07/a-simplistic-redshift-trouble-shooting.html