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Martin Gregor - PeerSpot reviewer
DWH, BI & Big Data consultant / developer /modeler - independent contractor at Freelancer
Real User
Top 10
Helps us create SQL ETL procedures in a business system
Pros and Cons
  • "I like it because the usage is very similar to Microsoft SQL server. The structure of the query and the temporary tables are very similar."
  • "The explain panel in the Redshift database could be better."

What is our primary use case?

I use Amazon Redshift for the creation of SQL ETL procedures in a business system. Business people check this in a front-end application, and it helps them plan sales for the next year.

Redshift is being deployed on a Microsoft Azure server.

There are about six people working on this project and using the solution, but there are many similar projects running on Oracle and Redshift.

What is most valuable?

I like it because the usage is very similar to Microsoft SQL server. The structure of the query and the temporary tables are very similar. Until recently, I thought it was the superior database, but now I think that Redshift is better.

What needs improvement?

The explain panel in the Redshift database could be better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for 10 months.

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November 2024
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable. I haven't had any problems or downfall with the database in the 10 months that I have used the solution.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have also used Microsoft SQL server and Oracle.

How was the initial setup?

Setup was difficult because I had to set up 25 connections with different users and passwords. The connections have been predefined, but there were still problems when trying to connect for the first time. I had some problems with some certifications that were malfunctioning. This might have had something to do with the functionality of my keyboard because if I pushed a random combination on the keyboard, it would delete the certificate from the folder and the connection wouldn't work. I think this is a problem with the remote desktop rather than with Redshift.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. I can't give it a higher score because there are some issues with variable character columns in the table. Otherwise, it's a great database.

Some of my former colleagues from a previous job have joined my organization, and they have had some issues with the SQRs because some things work differently in Redshift, like the partition bar. If someone has issues with Redshift, my advice is to check with support.

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Service Manager & Solution Architect at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Easy to use and simple to setup, but the performance is low, and there is no tool to support the CDC
Pros and Cons
  • "It is quite simple to use and there are no issues with creating the tables."
  • "It takes a lot of time to ingest and update the data."

What is our primary use case?

We stored all of the data in the S3 bucket and would like to have it stored in a data warehouse, which is why we chose this database. 

It would be very easy for us as an end-user, who would like to access the data, rather than draw it post-transformation and store it at a database level.

What is most valuable?

The TP transactions for the creation of the tables does very well.

It is quite simple to use and there are no issues with creating the tables.

What needs improvement?

The managing updates, deletes, and role-level change performance is very low. For example, while you are doing inserts, updates, deletes, and amalgamates, the performance is very, very poor.

If you want to query the database after you have a lot of terabytes of data, the load, performance-wise, is very low.

Looking at the performance of the query, querying the database, and especially with the amalgamates when it is getting updated, it is really poor.

We like this solution and have tried all of the native services; they were working quite well. The only concern about Redshift was managing the cluster, especially the EMR cluster. Our company policy was not to use EMR clusters, especially with the nodes failing. There were many instances of downtime happening. Essentially, there was too much data traffic.

The other drawback was the CDC, as we do not have any tools that can support it.

Creating the structure is easy on the DDL side, but after you create the table and you want to transform the data to store it in a database, the performance is poor.

It takes a lot of time to ingest and update the data. After you ingest the data and someone wants to fetch it in the table, it takes a lot of time performance-wise to return the results.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for three months.

We are using the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are issues with stability and it should be compared with Snowflake.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is scalable. We scale up and scale down manually when we are required to, we do not have an automatic setup.

We have three or four people using this solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have contacted technical support to give our opinion and recommendations or feedback and they agreed that it needs improvement.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, we tried the Snowflake database, which works really well. The expectations were really good with the performance, also the DDL, DML operations on the processing of the data.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is simple and we did not find it very complex at all.

The time it takes to deploy depends on how many tables you want to create, or how many tables will you merge the data with.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are switching to Azure, although not because of the product or the services that we did not like. It's about AWS being competitors for logistic companies that we are working with. Also for security reasons, we do not know how secure the data is on the cloud.

If you are competitors then you don't know if the data can be accessed by your competitor, and the team can be looking at a demographic, which could impact your sales.

What other advice do I have?

We have only just started using Redshift, but we are not really satisfied with it.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Amazon Redshift
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Amazon Redshift. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
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Beverly R. Jamison - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Solutions Architect / Computer Scientist at Practical Semantics
Real User
Top 5
Scalable, reliable, and simple implementation
Pros and Cons
  • "The stability of Amazon Redshift is good."
  • "The solution could improve in handling more data formats and more native support for RDF."

What is our primary use case?

I have used DBeaver to connect to SAP Amazon Redshift and my main use case is for SQL. I map data from a graph database into SQL.

How has it helped my organization?

Amazon Redshift has benefited the company by allowing us to scale. 

What needs improvement?

The solution could improve in handling more data formats and more native support for RDF.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon Redshift for approximately one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of Amazon Redshift is good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Amazon Redshift is a scalability solution.

How are customer service and support?

I have not used technical support. If I need support I ask my colleagues.

How was the initial setup?

The initial implementation of Amazon Redshift is simple. There was not anything difficult about getting started with the solution.

What other advice do I have?

It's important to have a grasp of the environment you're working in, including a basic understanding of Amazon AWS. Additionally, when selecting an interface to work with, it's essential to choose wisely, as you'll likely be using it for an extended period of time.

I rate Amazon Redshift an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Jayanta Datta - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley
Real User
Top 20
Smooth initial setup, scalable, with comparable market cost
Pros and Cons
  • "We have found Machine Learning use cases are very nice."
  • "Infinite storage is available in Snowflake and is not available in Redshift."

What is our primary use case?

It is storing warehouse data for the organization. We commission data warehousing, storage of data, and reporting.

What is most valuable?

Data Science and Machine Learning are valuable features. We have found Machine Learning use cases are very nice.

What needs improvement?

Infinite storage is available in Snowflake and is not available in Redshift. Analytical tools for integration would be helpful in the future.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Amazon Redshift for seven years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have found Amazon Redshift to be stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have no problems with scalability.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The initial setup is very smooth and took us about six months to deploy.  The cost is comparable to Snowflake.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Amazon Redshift a nine out of ten. I am very satisfied with it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
AishwaryaKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at Capgemini
Real User
Plenty of features, high availability, and elaborate documentation
Pros and Cons
  • "For the on-premises version of Amazon Redshift, we need to start from scratch. However, with the cloud version whenever you want to deploy, you can scale up, and down, and it has a data warehousing capability. Redshift has many features."
  • "We are using third-party tools to integrate Amazon Redshift, they should create their own interface on their own for it to be easily connected on the AWS itself."

What is most valuable?

For the on-premises version of Amazon Redshift, we need to start from scratch. However, with the cloud version whenever you want to deploy, you can scale up, and down, and it has a data warehousing capability. Redshift has many features.

They have enriched and elaborate documentation that is helpful.

What needs improvement?

We are using third-party tools to integrate Amazon Redshift, they should create their own interface on their own for it to be easily connected on the AWS itself.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon Redshift for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Amazon Redshift is reliable and has high availability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Amazon Redshift is good.

We have approximately 20 people using this solution in my organization.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before we were using Amazon Redshift, we were working with Postgres, Greenplum, and Oracle SQL. These were on-premises databases, and we migrated to the cloud.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price of Amazon Redshift is reasonable because it depends on the usage that you use and for DWH for the long term.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others that if they have a large set of data where you have a less number of updates, then choose Amazon Redshift. If there is more update and fewer inserts, then do not use Amazon Redshift.

I rate Amazon Redshift an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
VictorSokolov - PeerSpot reviewer
Composition Data Architect at Intellias
Real User
Top 20
A powerful database system that works quickly with huge volumes of data
Pros and Cons
  • "Amazon Redshift is a really powerful database system for reporting and data warehousing."
  • "The product must provide new indexes that support special data structures or data types like TEXT."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution to build a data warehouse schema for a target database for analytics. We are uploading data from different transactional databases into Amazon Redshift. We use it for reporting purposes. We use the tool mainly for querying and retrieving the data for analytics.

How has it helped my organization?

The fast querying of a huge amount of data greatly impacts our data workflows. All the queries work pretty fast.

What is most valuable?

Amazon Redshift is a really powerful database system for reporting and data warehousing. I like the product. It works really fast with significant volumes of data. The product covers all the main functionalities required for our data security and compliance needs. It has almost everything we need. It is the main data source for our analytics functionality. We can run our models using the data stored in the database. The ease of use is fine. It is pretty easy to integrate the solution with other products and third-party solutions.

What needs improvement?

The product must provide new indexes that support special data structures or data types like TEXT.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have no complaints about the product’s stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The tool is scalable. About 30 to 50 analysts use the solution in our organization. We need one or two people to administer the solution.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't heard any complaints about the support team from our DevOps engineers.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My project involves analytics and data warehousing. I use Amazon Redshift. I also use AWS Glue as an ETL tool.

What other advice do I have?

I will recommend the product to others for data warehousing and data analytics. However, I do not recommend the solution for small companies that do not have enough volume of data to analyze. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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VP, Data and Insights at a tech company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Secure and reliable data warehouse for transactional and clickstream data
Pros and Cons
  • "If the analyst knows SQL, which is comfortable and easy to use to go between all of these tool stacks, I think it's reliable. It's a secure and reliable data warehouse."
  • "There are physically too many pipelines for a company of this size to maintain. For a data scientist, it's very difficult to learn the data in all of these different environments."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for production and customer data for one of the lines of the business, which is basically one of the warehouses. I oversee the whole architecture infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

The price isn't bad for the performance for a cloud data warehouse. It's also connected to Databricks but uses SQL. It's comparable to BigQuery. If the analyst knows SQL, which is comfortable and easy to use to go between all of these tool stacks, I think it's reliable. It's a secure and reliable data warehouse.

The performance is good, and it's pretty fast. We also have Looker and MOLE connected to it for visualization, which works seamlessly. We're storing a lot of data. There's a lot of transactional data, clickstream data, and telemetry about the customer, what they're purchasing, call logs, and marketing data.

The analysts are familiar with SQL, and they're able to do this. Even the data scientists who aren't that savvy in Python, because they are very strong in SQL, are able to interact with it very quickly. I'm able to bring in more analysts for support.

What needs improvement?

There are physically too many pipelines for a company of this size to maintain. For a data scientist, it's very difficult to learn the data in all of these different environments. It's easier to train people in just one environment to start with, like Snowflake or Databricks. It's difficult to have so many technologies that are very comparable, and each comes with a price tag.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for seven months in my current company, but I have also used it in a couple of my previous companies.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. For a mid-size company, it's very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's very scalable.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate the technical support as 10 out of 10.

We had one or two tickets, and they responded extremely quickly. Technical support is good, but that's because we aren't running into many issues. The solution is pretty stable. The individuals who set it up did a very good job.

How was the initial setup?

It wasn't too complex because only a few people were needed to set up the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's not very pricey compared to other tools. I would rate the price as 5 out of 10.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

In my organization, we also use GCP, Amazon EC2, Databricks, and Snowflake. We also have Delta Lakehouse. I'm going to move everything into the Delta Lakehouse. For a company of this size, it's a lot of tools to physically maintain with a small data engineering team.

I think Snowflake has a few more features. In Redshift, you need to write a bit more SQL in some instances, but it's very user-friendly and fast. It can be used as a data warehouse solution as well. It can also do some analytics.

Redshift is comparable to other solutions. I wanted to go with Amazon EC2 because we also have Databricks, and I think I can cover some of those features with the combination of that.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. It's a very strong solution.

My advice is to do your research and see if it makes sense for you. You can always request a demo from Redshift.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Syed Zakaulla - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Softway
Integrator
Top 5Leaderboard
Despite the tool's extensive documentation, the setup is relatively fine
Pros and Cons
  • "Though Amazon Redshift is good, it depends on what kind of business you're trying to do, what type of analytics you need, and how much data you have."
  • "If you require a highly scalable solution, I would not recommend Amazon Redshift."

What is our primary use case?

We were using the solution for our data backup, but we wanted to optimize it, so we turned to AWS Glue. Amazon Redshift wasn't really great for us and wasn't working out.

What is most valuable?

Amazon Redshift was used for data storage while moving back from S3 to Amazon. However, it lagged, taking its own sweet time for data backups which also depended on the server location. Because of the aforementioned reasons, we started losing a lot of data that wasn't even real-time data. Ultimately, this affected our analytics at the end of the day. Also, we have been trying to do some work on our AI models, which emit out recommendations based on the live dataset. There were a lot of lagging issues. So, for example, sending out somewhere around 0.1 million or 100,000 emails used to take almost 12-14 working days, and this also includes the process of pulling all the data and sending them to CronJobs. Since we wanted all this work to happen in real-time, we had to get rid of the tool.

What needs improvement?

I would like Amazon Redshift to improve its performance, analytics, scalability, and stability. Other than these points, I am not aware of any other areas to address since Amazon provides a variety of independent services for their customers to choose from, and if one were to express dissatisfaction with Amazon Redshift, Amazon would likely suggest AWS Glue as an alternative. Similarly, if another issue arose, Amazon might recommend Amazon RDS. There are a lot of things they try to upsell to you, each with its own pros and cons and in different packages offering different perks. So, it all depends on your business needs and what you choose for your business. I wouldn't criticize Amazon for this because they have created packages tailored to their customer's needs, which helps to prevent customers from looking elsewhere.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Amazon Redshift as an implementer for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, it has a lot of issues with threats, and that is why we went for a threat shift optimization. In short, I mean to say that it is not stable at all.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

If you require a highly scalable solution, I would not recommend Amazon Redshift. We currently have 12 clients using Amazon Redshift, and the scalability of the solution is terrible. In terms of scalability, I would rate this solution a three or four out of ten.

How was the initial setup?

Amazon Redshift has a lot of documentation, but the setup is fine. Three years ago, the solution's deployment process took over a month or a month and a half.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Every solution has a cost and comes in different packages. Considering these factors, AWS Glue is on top. Though Amazon Redshift is good, it depends on what kind of business you're trying to do, what type of analytics you need, and how much data you have.

For Amazon Redshift, we pay around INR 60,000 annually. The cost factor also depends on the number of existing customers. In addition to the standard licensing fee paid for AWS, we incur a cloud storage cost of around a quarter million for the amount of data. We also have to bear additional costs for data security and cybersecurity, which are well taken care of by Amazon, hence the premium pricing. There are several other features and services provided by Amazon that justify the premium pricing.

What other advice do I have?

Amazon Redshift is a horrible solution. I recommend my customer to use AWS Glue since while dealing globally with real-time data, which you need to make decisions, factors like how much cost and data is needed to make a decision should be considered. Apart from this, if customers are paying a huge price for the solution, then probably Amazon shouldn't mind spending on the tool. However, it may not be necessary for small businesses with only a few thousand data points. Although Azure is a better option, some clients prefer AWS, and we had to develop a solution using AWS for our client. Overall, I rate this solution a three or four out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
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Updated: November 2024
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Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon Redshift Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.