Amazon Redshift Reviews

I'm the head of Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence, and our company is an Amazon customer. Most of the company's data sources were on Amazon at the time the product was deployed so it was logical to use this database. The data warehouse is quite small, compressed it's maybe 160 GB. It's not like an autonomous data warehouse or Exadata, which was almost 40 terabytes. It's a simple method of achieving extraction and loading. There is no real incremental load on this. Of course in the future, with the company growing, this should be changed and we'll probably need some kind of incremental system instead of this approach.

The product is relatively easy to use because there is no indexing and no partitions. There is no referential integrity only declarative, which is okay.

From my perspective, the product could be improved by making it more flexible. There are now more flexible products on the market that allow for expandability and dynamic expansion as the market changes with regard to data warehouses. Although the product is simple to use there can be problems. If you declare some unique key in a column and then store it, the database is going to believe this is what you have and results will be distorted. It's fine if the query is simple but if it's complex or you have too many queries per hour, it can create a bottleneck for Redshift and then you can't return and recover. It requires some fine-tuning. 

For additional features, I would like to see support for partitions, it doesn't exist yet as a feature. It's quite an important issue when you're dealing with large databases. Also, I believe the product needs improvement in parallel threading to support more database users without jeopardizing performance.

I've been using Redshift for about a year and a half. 

We sometimes have issues with stability, especially over the weekends. It performs, of course, but sometimes there are problems. 

In terms of pricing, if you plan to use the product for a small company and you compare the cost to a product like Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse, then you need to consider potential company growth and whether you may need to expand the system in the future, require partitions, etc. It could be that in the end, Autonomous Data Warehouse is cheaper than Amazon because if you use that product it can fit your processes and run dynamically. This is not possible on Redshift. If you have two different types of servers on Redshift then at some point you'll reach a limit and will need to move to another type of cluster which is not such an easy operation. On the other hand, with Autonomous Data Warehouse, you can add extra terabytes, but that's it. Nothing else. 

I would rate it a five out of ten. 

We are using Amazon Redshift services to query the data and to perform certain data science operations on that data, such as applying a machine learning algorithm or doing an analysis.

The most valuable features of Amazon Redshift are that its fast and efficient. We have lots of TBs of data and it's very fast.

Amazon Redshift could improve the user interface support.

I have been using Amazon Redshift for approximately one year.

Amazon Redshift is a stable solution. However, there are many times the environment configuration changes very quickly without any intimidation and it creates a lot of problems for running our codes.

The scalability of Amazon Redshift is good. The solution is best suited for larger-scale businesses because the price is affordable for them and they need the complexity.

The support from Amazon Redshift is very good.

Amazon Redshift is somewhat complex to deploy. The process could improve.

Amazon Redshift is an expensive solution. Larger organizations can afford this solution, but smaller businesses would struggle to afford it.

I rate Amazon Redshift an eight out of ten.

We primarily use Amazon Redshift for prediction modeling and business reporting.

The most valuable feature is its scalability.

The technical support should be better in terms of their knowledge, and they should be more customer-friendly.

I have been using Amazon Redshift for approximately one year.

This is a stable product.

The scalability is very good, and it is one of the best features of this solution.

We have approximately 10 people who use it, four of which are engineers. At this point, we do not have plans to increase the number of users.

The initial setup is straightforward. I do not recall, however, how long it took to deploy.

In summary, this is a good solution and I recommend it. That said, the customer support needs to be improved.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our data warehouse is Redshift now.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the solution so far, and, from an accounting perspective, it works well for my tasks and duties. 

The product is very stable. 

Changing from local servers to the cloud is very easy. It's so nice not to have to worry about physical servers. 

We need more AWS applications. They have some solutions from Amazon that can manage performance, however, we will need something that can also manage financial reporting, visualization, and analytics - instead of having to go to other solutions like Tableau or Power BI. If they can offer comparable options, we'd like to be able to choose all AWS solutions instead of other platforms. 

The refreshment rate of data reaching Redshift from other sources should be faster.

It could be more efficient during tasks such as data refreshing or uploading. 

I've been using the solution for about a year or so. It hasn't been too long just yet.

The solution is very stable. It's better than OWC, as a technology. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

I cannot speak to how helpful technical support is as this is not my area of expertise here. I'm not directly connected with AWS. That said, it is my understanding that they are doing a pretty good job with our own technical team and they have been helpful.

We used ODBC before to maintain our tables. Oracle ODBC was used as a server, as a data warehouse environment.

Changing to Redshift was a big change for us. However, after a while, we get used to it and it is okay now as it's coming together under a bigger picture of a framework, as a bigger framework. We are going to keep everything in the cloud and moving to AWS and we will put everything there and manage it as a framework going forward.

I'm not using it day in, day out and I did not handle the initial setup. There is a team involved with that side of the product. I'm using it for the closing of the accounting cycle every month. I don't handle implementation tasks. 

I cannot speak to the pricing. I don't handle billing or payments. 

We're customers and end-users.

While I cannot speak to the exact version number, my understanding is that we are using the most up-to-date version of the solution. 

I'd advise those considering the solution to go for AWS products. They are the best. You will have more synergy between your software. It's nice not having multi-software working on the technology itself. If you can, use as many genuine Amazon products as possible and integrate them together. 

Overall, I would rate the product at a seven out of ten. 

Our primary use case of this product is as a data warehouse. We are partners with Amazon. 

Amazon Redshift has a very user-friendly SQL editor and it's very easy to use the connectors. The product provides a lot of options to connect to different sources and the modeling capabilities are also good. As a fully managed data warehouse solution, the two important aspects are the connectors and how well we can use SQL for data modeling. In both cases, this is an efficient product.

Improvement could be made in the area of streaming data. The capability can definitely be improved. There are other products like Kinesis which is a separate service we use for streaming data ingestion. Whatever features are missing in Redshift, they have separate sources but if there were the feasibility to ingest real-time streaming data directly into RedShift, that would be very useful. 

I've been using this solution for the past year. 

The product is 100% stable.

The solution is scalable. This is backend technology and end users are not aware they are using it. We probably have four or five users in the company. 

The technical support is good, they're very responsive. 

The initial setup is very simple because it's a fully managed service and not much is required from the user's end.

The licensing is paid on a monthly basis, and I think the pricing is acceptable. They also have a pay-per-go model which is on a per user basis. 

If a company is already using Amazon Cloud or they're looking for a cloud solution, Amazon is one of the oldest and most reliable cloud service providers and Redshift is a no-brainer for data warehouse needs.

I rate this product a nine out of 10. 

Amazon Redshift is very fast. It has really good response times. It's very user-friendly.

Redshift is a multi-tier engine that works like a calculator. There is some missing functionality and sometimes it's so difficult to work in. We need to convert these functionalities using VACUUM inside Amazon Redshift and then it causes some complexity. Sometimes I'd like for them to support some special features or some special installations because we need automatic populations. I would like to see more programming outside of the cloud. I would like to see more functionalities under JSON files. the only functionality that they have now with JSON is reports. I would also like to see other data sources like MongoDB.

I have used Amazon Redshift for three years. I use the latest version because it is on Amazon's public cloud.

The management of the dates for what we can deliver to it, it's always specific to the form that's defined to Amazon Redshift.

I have used their technical support only a few times. Before talking to support I usually try to troubleshoot things myself and I'm usually able to resolve any issues. 

In the past year, we have used Azure, but the committee has chosen Amazon Redshift because it is better than Azure for our company needs. We have grown around Amazon Redshift and other AWS solutions.

Amazon Redshift is not as straightforward as other AWS tools but it is not that difficult.

Amazon Redshift costs less than Oracle Cloud or Microsoft Azure.

I started using Amazon Redshift because I started working for this company that was working with both Azure and Amazon. The company eventually moved all to Amazon. I wasn't sure why they didn't continue to use Azure. My experience was more with Microsoft technology so I prefer Azure. But, there are some interesting features in Amazon Redshift that works better. I have also used Oracle Cloud.

I would recommend Amazon Redshift as it is part of the AWS platform and they are the biggest in the world.

I would give Amazon Redshift a rating of eight on a scale of ten.

We are a service provider and we currently have five clients with active IT implementations that use Amazon Redshift. We also use it ourselves.

My clients primarily use this product for data analytics. They are mostly working with big data and using the machine learning functionality.

I like the cost-benefit ratio, meaning that it is as easy to use as it is powerful and well-performing. There are only three parameters that you need to understand, which are the distribution key, the sort key, and the compression method or encoding method. Once you understand these, you can tune the performance.

I would like a better way to ingest data in realtime because there is a bit too much latency.

There are too many limitations with respect to concurrency. It is now possible to auto-scale it, although that is still slow.

It could offer smaller nodes with decoupling of storage and processing because for the moment, the only nodes available to work that way are huge, and for large companies.

My first implementation of Redshift was three and a half years ago, in 2017.

We have not had many issues with stability.

Scalability can be a problem if you don't write your database queries correctly. For example, if you write a cartesian product in Redshift then you may end up consuming all of the resources. However, it does have features like workload management to prevent this from happening.

Our clients are mid-sized to very large companies.

I have been in touch with Amazon technical support and they are very good. They are efficient and resolve problems quickly. They know what they're doing and they're very professional.

I have also used Snowflake and its methods for ingesting real-time data are faster. It also offers a bit more functionality and a bit more flexibility. It's a bit easier to maintain and faster to scale, but more expensive as well.

To me, the big drawback with Snowflake is that the data is not stored in your AWS or Azure subscription, or AWS account. They store the data in their own account that they manage for you, which might be a problem for some companies in terms of compliance and legal requirements.

Azure Synapse and Google BigQuery are also competing solutions.

The deployment is very straightforward and it usually takes a couple of minutes. This is one of the reasons I like it.

As long as a person understands the AWS landscape, they can deploy it on their own. Otherwise, without realizing it, they might for example deploy a Redshift cluster that is not properly secure. Similarly, it could cost a lot of money if they don't know what they're doing. You don't need a very in-depth technical expertise, but you do need to understand how AWS works.

I have a team that provides maintenance for our customers. It is spread between France and Belgium and I have 25 people who report to me, with another 20 who I work with indirectly.

The cost of Redshift ranges from a few hundred dollars a month to thousands of dollars a month, according to the resources that you're going to use, the number of nodes, and the type of nodes.

My customers have implementations that cost about $500 a month for a very small one. I also have a customer with a monthly invoice of about $25,000 USD.

With the most recent update, we should now be able to decouple storage from processes.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Redshift is to make sure that they are using it for what it is made to do. It's an analytical database, so it's not meant to process transactional data. It's the perfect tool if you use it for the right purpose.

Overall, it is a very stable and robust product. That said, there is still plenty of potential for improvement.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are a digital transformation services company, and we are using Amazon Redshift for one of our clients. They are a logistics company that has transportation and other needs.

Their first requirement is for financial reporting, where we pull financial data from their many ERP systems and can provide a corporate-level view.

There is also an operations standpoint, where they are looking for operational insights. For this, we again pull different information from their ERPs, bring it into Redshift, and then model it in such a way that they will be able to see a consolidated view in terms of operational success across lines of business.

I've been working with data warehouses for a long time and it has always been the case that we had to invest quite a bit on infrastructure, upfront. We are used to dealing with Teradata, and the cost of setting up the data center and getting the appropriate licenses was a big deal. Now, we are able to spin up some clusters and then start using it, allowing us to incrementally pay as we expand.

This has become a big shift in how we spend because there is no capital cost upfront. Moreover, this works with startups as well as with enterprise, and they provide an equal footing. This means that even the advanced capabilities and insights that are available with a data warehouse are no longer limited to the larger clients. Even a startup can use these features, immediately.

The most valuable feature is the scalability, as it grows according to our needs.

The part that I like best is that you only pay for what you are using.

The OLAP slide and dice features need to be improved. For example, if a business wants to bring in a general ledger from an ERP, they want to slice and dice the data. What we have found is that they have a lot of formulas that are used to calculate metrics, so what we do is use SQL Server Analysis Services. The question then becomes one of adopting a single vendor and transitioning to Azure. If Redshift had similar capabilities then it would be very good.

We have been using Amazon Redshift for about five years.

The stability is awesome. We have been using it for quite a while and haven't faced any issues.

The scalability is very good. You can start at a very low scale and just keep expanding as required. It is the type of product that fits organizations of all sizes.

We have contacted support on several occasions. With our most recent customer, they are pretty large and we were directly in touch with the regional account manager, who is the head of database analytics for India. This person was directly involved in our calls and helped with the evaluation, so the support has been pretty good.

We have worked with Teradata and more recently, have been working with Azure SQL Warehouse. Teradata is an on-premises solution and the upfront costs are high. Comparing Azure SQL Warehouse and Amazon Redshift, in terms of features I think that they are pretty much on par.

The SQL Data Warehouse does have better OLAP capabilities, and they also offer a level of serverless capability where they have split the compute and the storage. This means that they can operate at a lower cost in the development environment.

Many of our clients have begun to adopt Power BI, and once they start using it, they tend to lean towards Azure and the Azure SQL Data Warehouse. The fact that Power BI is free, makes quite an impact.

The initial setup is straightforward, once you get used to it. There is a lot of documentation available.

We handle the implementation and deployment of Redshift for our clients.

I am interested in seeing a split between compute and storage, which is something that they are currently working on. We plan to start leveraging it at some point in the future.

In summary, I think that Amazon Redshift is a very good data warehouse and we really like it a lot.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.