Amazon Redshift | Billing Flashcards
Why should I use Amazon Redshift instead of running my own MPP data warehouse cluster on Amazon EC2?
Billing
Amazon Redshift | Database
Amazon Redshift automatically handles many of the time-consuming tasks associated with managing your own data warehouse including:
Setup: With Amazon Redshift, you simply create a data warehouse cluster, define your schema, and begin loading and querying your data. Provisioning, configuration and patching are all managed for you.
Data Durability: Amazon Redshift replicates your data within your data warehouse cluster and continuously backs up your data to Amazon S3, which is designed for eleven nines of durability. Amazon Redshift mirrors each drive’s data to other nodes within your cluster. If a drive fails, your queries will continue with a slight latency increase while Redshift rebuilds your drive from replicas. In case of node failure(s), Amazon Redshift automatically provisions new node(s) and begins restoring data from other drives within the cluster or from Amazon S3. It prioritizes restoring your most frequently queried data so your most frequently executed queries will become performant quickly.
Scaling: You can add or remove nodes from your Amazon Redshift data warehouse cluster with a single API call or via a few clicks in the AWS Management Console as your capacity and performance needs change.
Automatic Updates and Patching: Amazon Redshift automatically applies upgrades and patches your data warehouse so you can focus on your application and not on its administration.
Exabyte Scale Query Capability: Redshift Spectrum enables you to run queries against exabytes of data in Amazon S3. There is no loading or ETL required. Even if you don’t store any of your data in Amazon Redshift, you can still use Redshift Spectrum to query datasets as large as an exabyte in Amazon S3.
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How will I be charged and billed for my use of Amazon Redshift?
Billing
Amazon Redshift | Database
You pay only for what you use, and there are no minimum or setup fees. You are billed based on:
Compute node hours – Compute node hours are the total number of hours you run across all your compute nodes for the billing period. You are billed for 1 unit per node per hour, so a 3-node data warehouse cluster running persistently for an entire month would incur 2,160 instance hours. You will not be charged for leader node hours; only compute nodes will incur charges.
Backup Storage – Backup storage is the storage associated with your automated and manual snapshots for your data warehouse. Increasing your backup retention period or taking additional snapshots increases the backup storage consumed by your data warehouse. There is no additional charge for backup storage up to 100% of your provisioned storage for an active data warehouse cluster. For example, if you have an active Single Node XL data warehouse cluster with 2TB of local instance storage, we will provide up to 2TB-Month of backup storage at no additional charge. Backup storage beyond the provisioned storage size and backups stored after your cluster is terminated are billed at standard Amazon S3 rates.
Data transfer – There is no data transfer charge for data transferred to or from Amazon Redshift and Amazon S3 within the same AWS Region. For all other data transfers into and out of Amazon Redshift, you will be billed at standard AWS data transfer rates.
Data scanned – With Redshift Spectrum, you are charged for the amount of Amazon S3 data scanned to execute your query. There are no charges for Redshift Spectrum when you’re not running queries. If you store data in a columnar format, such as Parquet or RC, your charges will go down as Redshift Spectrum will only scan the columns needed by the query, rather than processing entire rows. Similarly, if you compress your data, using one of Redshift Spectrum’s supported formats, your costs will also go down. You pay the standard Amazon S3 rates for data storage and Amazon Redshift instance rates for the cluster used.
For Amazon Redshift pricing information, please visit the Amazon Redshift pricing page.
When does billing of my Amazon Redshift data warehouse clusters begin and end?
Billing
Amazon Redshift | Database
Billing commences for a data warehouse cluster as soon as the data warehouse cluster is available. Billing continues until the data warehouse cluster terminates, which would occur upon deletion or in the event of instance failure.
What defines billable Amazon Redshift instance hours?
Billing
Amazon Redshift | Database
Node usage hours are billed for each hour your data warehouse cluster is running in an available state. If you no longer wish to be charged for your data warehouse cluster, you must terminate it to avoid being billed for additional node hours. Partial node hours consumed are billed as full hours.
