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  1. Stackups
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  4. Big Data As A Service
  5. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL vs Amazon Redshift

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL vs Amazon Redshift

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift
Stacks1.5K
Followers1.4K
Votes108
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Stacks814
Followers607
Votes40

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL vs Amazon Redshift: What are the differences?

## Introduction

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and Amazon Redshift are both popular data storage solutions offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), each tailored for specific use cases. Here are the key differences between the two services:

1. **Database Type**:
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL is a managed relational database service that supports PostgreSQL, a powerful open-source object-relational database system. On the other hand, Amazon Redshift is a fully managed data warehouse service that is optimized for online analytical processing (OLAP) workloads and is based on a modified version of PostgreSQL.

2. **Use Case**:
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL is ideal for OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) applications that require ACID-compliant transactions and relational database features. In contrast, Amazon Redshift is specifically designed for running complex queries on large datasets for analytics and business intelligence purposes, making it suitable for decision support workloads.

3. **Scalability**:
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL allows you to scale your database vertically by resizing the instance, storage, or implementing read replicas. Amazon Redshift, on the other hand, is designed for horizontal scalability, allowing you to add additional nodes to your cluster to increase storage and computing capacity as needed.

4. **Data Modeling**:
In Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, data modeling follows traditional relational database principles with normalized tables and relationships. Conversely, Amazon Redshift encourages denormalized data models to optimize query performance, allowing for greater parallelism in processing large volumes of data.

5. **Concurrency**:
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL supports high levels of concurrent transactions typical of OLTP workloads. In contrast, Amazon Redshift is optimized for handling high levels of concurrent queries for analytics, leveraging massively parallel processing (MPP) to speed up query performance on large datasets.

6. **Cost Structure**:
While both services offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL is typically more cost-effective for small to medium-sized relational database workloads, whereas Amazon Redshift may be more cost-efficient for organizations dealing with extensive data warehousing and analytics requirements due to its optimized architecture.

In Summary, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL is a managed relational database service optimized for OLTP workloads, while Amazon Redshift is a fully managed data warehouse service tailored for analytics and business intelligence tasks.

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Advice on Amazon Redshift, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

datocrats-org
datocrats-org

Jul 29, 2020

Needs adviceonAmazon EC2Amazon EC2TableauTableauPowerBIPowerBI

We need to perform ETL from several databases into a data warehouse or data lake. We want to

  • keep raw and transformed data available to users to draft their own queries efficiently
  • give users the ability to give custom permissions and SSO
  • move between open-source on-premises development and cloud-based production environments

We want to use inexpensive Amazon EC2 instances only on medium-sized data set 16GB to 32GB feeding into Tableau Server or PowerBI for reporting and data analysis purposes.

319k views319k
Comments
Lonnie
Lonnie

CEO - Co-founder US, Mexico Binational Tech Start-up Accelerator, Incubator at Framework Science

May 9, 2019

ReviewonAmazon DynamoDBAmazon DynamoDBAmazon RDS for PostgreSQLAmazon RDS for PostgreSQL

We use Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL because RDS and Amazon DynamoDB are two distinct database systems. DynamoDB is NoSQL DB whereas RDS is a relational database on the cloud. The pricing will mainly differ in the type of application you are using and your requirements. For some applications, both DynamoDB and RDS, can serve well, for some it might not. I do not think DynamoDB is cheaper. Right now we are helping Companies in Silicon Valley and in Southern California go SERVERLESS - drastically lowering costs if you are interested in hearing how we go about it.

9.18k views9.18k
Comments
Julien
Julien

CTO at Hawk

Sep 19, 2020

Decided

Cloud Data-warehouse is the centerpiece of modern Data platform. The choice of the most suitable solution is therefore fundamental.

Our benchmark was conducted over BigQuery and Snowflake. These solutions seem to match our goals but they have very different approaches.

BigQuery is notably the only 100% serverless cloud data-warehouse, which requires absolutely NO maintenance: no re-clustering, no compression, no index optimization, no storage management, no performance management. Snowflake requires to set up (paid) reclustering processes, to manage the performance allocated to each profile, etc. We can also mention Redshift, which we have eliminated because this technology requires even more ops operation.

BigQuery can therefore be set up with almost zero cost of human resources. Its on-demand pricing is particularly adapted to small workloads. 0 cost when the solution is not used, only pay for the query you're running. But quickly the use of slots (with monthly or per-minute commitment) will drastically reduce the cost of use. We've reduced by 10 the cost of our nightly batches by using flex slots.

Finally, a major advantage of BigQuery is its almost perfect integration with Google Cloud Platform services: Cloud functions, Dataflow, Data Studio, etc.

BigQuery is still evolving very quickly. The next milestone, BigQuery Omni, will allow to run queries over data stored in an external Cloud platform (Amazon S3 for example). It will be a major breakthrough in the history of cloud data-warehouses. Omni will compensate a weakness of BigQuery: transferring data in near real time from S3 to BQ is not easy today. It was even simpler to implement via Snowflake's Snowpipe solution.

We also plan to use the Machine Learning features built into BigQuery to accelerate our deployment of Data-Science-based projects. An opportunity only offered by the BigQuery solution

193k views193k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

It is optimized for data sets ranging from a few hundred gigabytes to a petabyte or more and costs less than $1,000 per terabyte per year, a tenth the cost of most traditional data warehousing solutions.

Amazon RDS manages complex and time-consuming administrative tasks such as PostgreSQL software installation and upgrades, storage management, replication for high availability and back-ups for disaster recovery. With just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, you can deploy a PostgreSQL database with automatically configured database parameters for optimal performance. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database instances can be provisioned with either standard storage or Provisioned IOPS storage. Once provisioned, you can scale from 10GB to 3TB of storage and from 1,000 IOPS to 30,000 IOPS.

Optimized for Data Warehousing- It uses columnar storage, data compression, and zone maps to reduce the amount of IO needed to perform queries. Redshift has a massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture, parallelizing and distributing SQL operations to take advantage of all available resources.;Scalable- With a few clicks of the AWS Management Console or a simple API call, you can easily scale the number of nodes in your data warehouse up or down as your performance or capacity needs change.;No Up-Front Costs- You pay only for the resources you provision. You can choose On-Demand pricing with no up-front costs or long-term commitments, or obtain significantly discounted rates with Reserved Instance pricing.;Fault Tolerant- Amazon Redshift has multiple features that enhance the reliability of your data warehouse cluster. All data written to a node in your cluster is automatically replicated to other nodes within the cluster and all data is continuously backed up to Amazon S3.;SQL - Amazon Redshift is a SQL data warehouse and uses industry standard ODBC and JDBC connections and Postgres drivers.;Isolation - Amazon Redshift enables you to configure firewall rules to control network access to your data warehouse cluster.;Encryption – With just a couple of parameter settings, you can set up Amazon Redshift to use SSL to secure data in transit and hardware-acccelerated AES-256 encryption for data at rest.<br>
Monitoring and Metrics –Amazon RDS provides Amazon CloudWatch metrics for you DB Instance deployments at no additional charge.;DB Event Notifications –Amazon RDS provides Amazon SNS notifications via email or SMS for your DB Instance deployments.;Automatic Software Patching – Amazon RDS will make sure that the PostgreSQL software powering your deployment stays up-to-date with the latest patches.;Automated Backups – Turned on by default, the automated backup feature of Amazon RDS enables point-in-time recovery for your DB Instance.;DB Snapshots – DB Snapshots are user-initiated backups of your DB Instance.;Pre-configured Parameters – Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL deployments are pre-configured with a sensible set of parameters and settings appropriate for the DB Instance class you have selected.;PostGIS;Language Extensions :PL/Perl, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl;Full Text Search Dictionaries;Advanced Data Types : HStore, JSON;Core PostgreSQL engine features
Statistics
Stacks
1.5K
Stacks
814
Followers
1.4K
Followers
607
Votes
108
Votes
40
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 41
    Data Warehousing
  • 27
    Scalable
  • 17
    SQL
  • 14
    Backed by Amazon
  • 5
    Encryption
Pros
  • 25
    Easy setup, backup, monitoring
  • 13
    Geospatial support
  • 2
    Master-master replication using Multi-AZ instance
Integrations
SQLite
SQLite
MySQL
MySQL
Oracle PL/SQL
Oracle PL/SQL
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Amazon Redshift, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL?

Google BigQuery

Google BigQuery

Run super-fast, SQL-like queries against terabytes of data in seconds, using the processing power of Google's infrastructure. Load data with ease. Bulk load your data using Google Cloud Storage or stream it in. Easy access. Access BigQuery by using a browser tool, a command-line tool, or by making calls to the BigQuery REST API with client libraries such as Java, PHP or Python.

Qubole

Qubole

Qubole is a cloud based service that makes big data easy for analysts and data engineers.

Amazon EMR

Amazon EMR

It is used in a variety of applications, including log analysis, data warehousing, machine learning, financial analysis, scientific simulation, and bioinformatics.

Heroku Postgres

Heroku Postgres

Heroku Postgres provides a SQL database-as-a-service that lets you focus on building your application instead of messing around with database management.

Altiscale

Altiscale

we run Apache Hadoop for you. We not only deploy Hadoop, we monitor, manage, fix, and update it for you. Then we take it a step further: We monitor your jobs, notify you when something’s wrong with them, and can help with tuning.

Snowflake

Snowflake

Snowflake eliminates the administration and management demands of traditional data warehouses and big data platforms. Snowflake is a true data warehouse as a service running on Amazon Web Services (AWS)—no infrastructure to manage and no knobs to turn.

ElephantSQL

ElephantSQL

ElephantSQL hosts PostgreSQL on Amazon EC2 in multiple regions and availability zones. The servers are continuously transferring the Write-Ahead-Log (the transaction log) to S3 for maximum reliability.

Stitch

Stitch

Stitch is a simple, powerful ETL service built for software developers. Stitch evolved out of RJMetrics, a widely used business intelligence platform. When RJMetrics was acquired by Magento in 2016, Stitch was launched as its own company.

Azure Synapse

Azure Synapse

It is an analytics service that brings together enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics. It gives you the freedom to query data on your terms, using either serverless on-demand or provisioned resources—at scale. It brings these two worlds together with a unified experience to ingest, prepare, manage, and serve data for immediate BI and machine learning needs.

Dremio

Dremio

Dremio—the data lake engine, operationalizes your data lake storage and speeds your analytics processes with a high-performance and high-efficiency query engine while also democratizing data access for data scientists and analysts.

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