Amazon Redshift Reviews

We use it to build a data warehouse and a centralized location for all of our data sources, allowing for in-depth analysis by using SQL queries.

• Allows for the storage of huge amounts of data. 
• Assists users to perform ad hoc analysis on a lot sources together.

• Windows functions, such as LEAD and LAG.
• Allows you write complex queries and perform row by row processes.

In the next release, a pivot function would be a big help. It could save a lot of time creating a query or process to handle operations.

The valuable features are performance, data compression, and scalability.

Query compilation time needs a lot of improvement for cases where you are generating queries dynamically. Also, it would help tremendously to have some more user-friendly, query optimization helper tools.

We have been using the solution for 24 months now.

We have not faced any stability related issues so far.

The time it takes to scale the cluster up or down is not trivial and it can take a while. In case you need to do this fast, you will need to think about other solutions.

Apart from the official documentation, we haven't had the need to reach out to technical support yet. The quality of the documentation is very good. There are a lot of very useful articles from the community.

Previously, we were using AWS RDS for our use case. We found that we had outgrown it. Our data grew in size and we wanted to still have performance queries.

The initial setup of the cluster was pretty straightforward. The following step, setting the right table configuration, was not so straightforward, though. It required an understanding of how the product works. Sort and distribution keys are required concepts to know about.

Redshift is very cost effective for a cloud based solution if you need to scale it a lot. For smaller data sizes, I would think about using other products.

We were thinking about using a self-managed PostgreSQL. We chose Redshift because we didn't need to manage it ourselves and because it integrates with the rest of the AWS services more fluently.

We are currently evaluating Druid.

It is very important to understand how Redshift is designed to work. The database schema design is not trivial and requires an in-depth knowledge about it, especially if your use-case requires it to perform well.

The primary use case for this solution is related to statistical data.

The best part about this solution is the cost.

The performance of this solution is good if you have only a few use cases and a few queries, but for larger applications, it is not so good. 

Running parallel queries results in poor performance and this needs to be improved.

This solution is stable, although we have had some issues with maintenance.

The scalability of this solution needs to be improved.

We have dealt with technical support and it is ok.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

The suitability of this solution depends on the environment and the requirements. For some, Amazon Redshift is perfect. However, some people will need better queries. Based on my research, many of the products are pretty close. It is possible that the much higher priced solutions have more differences.

This is a good solution but the queries need to perform better.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The valuable features are:

• PostgreSQL Interface
• Scalability
• Pricing/Maintenance/Setup

The PostgreSQL interface is good because you can play with big data with just SQL. This is one of the reasons why they made Hive.

However, Hive’s SQL is still not as standard as what Redshift provides:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/red...

Redshift has been the data warehouse in at least three of my previous companies. The impact is huge to anyone who uses data in any way.

I would like to see improvements in the database integrations. Currently, Amazon does not provide real-time/near real-time integration with other products like RDS or DynamoDB out-of-the-box.

We need to either build the integrations ourselves, or rely on third-party services which are not always the best.

We have been using this solution for over three years.

There were stability issues in the beginning. However, the product has improved quite a lot in the last two years in term of stability.

Redshift can scale up to a petabyte with a few simple clicks.

Technical support is good, but similar to any other Amazon Web Service, you have to pay for a good level of technical support.

We did not have a previous solution. Redshift worked for us the first time we tried. The pricing could not be beaten by anything else in the market at that time.

The installation was straightforward and only required a few clicks.

Pricing was quite a strong point of Redshift when it was first released. Nowadays, quite a number of other services are very competitive in pricing, such as BigQuery.

Redshift, like any other big data technology, isn’t a silver bullet for everything. The most important thing is to understand your data and your requirements before you make any decision to use any technology.

We primarily use the solution for analytics.

The solution's flexibility is its most valuable feature. It's also easy to scale and has relatively painless pricing. 

The speed of the solution and its portability needs improvement.

The solution is getting more stable with each new version. It's stable now, but it can always continue to improve.

The solution can scale easily.

I've never been in touch with technical support.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We use public and hybrid cloud deployment models. We are Amazon partners.

The solution itself is very popular. Many people use it these days.

I recently went to an AWS summit in Zurich. I was very impressed by AWS and the presentation. Their solutions are very good.

I'd rate this solution eight out of ten.

Redshift's Excel features are handy. Redshift spectrum allows you to directly query the data on an Excel sheet. Now, SQL Server also allows this, but Redshift has many more features.

Amazon should provide more cloud-native tools that can integrate with Redshift like Microsoft's development tools for Azure. 

I've only used Redshift a couple of times to do a proof of concept.

Redshift has had some scaling issues, but Redshift's performance overall is excellent. 

We haven't encountered many challenges so far.

Redshift setup is easy. It's not an issue. 

I rate Redshift nine out of 10. If you're thinking about implementing Redshift, I would recommend focusing on the use case. It's a warehouse database, not a transactional system, so they need to plan their workload before migrating to Redshift.