Amazon Redshift User Manual

Amazon Redshift Clusters
Topics
• Overview (p. 4)
• Managing Clusters Using the Console (p. 7)
• Managing Clusters Using AWS SDK for Java (p. 21)
• Manage Clusters Using Amazon Redshift CLI and API (p. 23)
• Managing Clusters in Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) (p. 23)
Overview
An Amazon Redshift data warehouse is a collection of computing resources called nodes.This collection
of nodes is called a cluster.When you provision a cluster, you specify the type and the number of nodes
that will make up the cluster. The node type determines the storage size, memory, CPU, and price of
each node in the cluster. All the compute nodes in the cluster will be of the same type. For a list of
supported node types and related pricing, go to the Amazon Redshift Pricing page.
If your storage and performance needs change after you initially provision your cluster, you can always
scale the cluster in or out by adding or removing nodes, scale the cluster up or down by specifying a
different node type, or you can do both. Resizing the cluster in either way involves minimal downtime.
Resizing replaces old cluster at the end of the resize operation.When you submit a resize request, the
source cluster remains in read-only mode until the resize operation is complete.
Each cluster runs an Amazon Redshift engine.
When you create a cluster you also provide master user name and password.This master user will have
access to all the databases you create within the cluster.
There are other configuration options you can specify. When you provision an Amazon Redshift cluster,
it is locked down by default so that nobody has access to it.The security group is a mechanism that you
can use to grant inbound access to the cluster. Other configuration parameters, which govern the behavior
of the databases on your cluster, are stored in a parameter group.You can associate one or more security
groups and a parameter group with your cluster. If you don't provide a security group or a parameter
group, Amazon Redshift associates a default parameter group and security group with the cluster. For
more information, see (Amazon Redshift Cluster Security Groups (p.32)) and Amazon Redshift Parameter
Groups (p. 41).
API Version 2012-12-01
4
Amazon Redshift Management Guide
Overview

Amazon Redshift Specifications

General

Provider	Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Query Language	SQL
Data Storage	Columnar storage
Security	Encryption at rest and in transit, VPC, IAM
Backup	Automated and manual snapshots
Deployment	Cloud-based
Type	Cloud-based data warehouse service
Primary Use	Data warehousing, analytics
Integration	Integrates with AWS services, BI tools, and ETL tools
Pricing Model	On-demand and reserved instance pricing
Data Compression	Columnar storage with data compression
Performance Optimization	Query optimization