Amazon Launches SSD-Based Dense Compute Redshift Nodes

Amazon (AMZN) Web Services (AWS) has launched a new solid state disk (SSD) storage node type for Redshift, the public cloud service vendor’s petabyte-scale data warehouse service.

According to AWS, the new Dense Compute nodes are meant to provide customer with the ability to create faster, lower-cost data warehouses. Important to this new node is the ability to start smaller before scaling up. AWS has released a 160GB dataset offering for as little as 10 cents per hour, providing an option to start much smaller than previous and then build up to hundreds of terabytes of SSD storage over time.

“We have been actively engaging with our customers using Amazon Redshift and watching them tap into insights that were previously out of reach to help grow their businesses,” said Raju Gulabani, vice president of database services at AWS, in a prepared statement. “Today, we are making Amazon Redshift even more accessible to customers, lowering the cost of a single node by as much as 56 percent while increasing the ratio of CPU, RAM and I/O to storage to offer even higher performance.”

With this addition, Redshift customers now have two node options: the new Dense Compute node and the incumbent Dense Storage node option. Each is aimed at a slightly different subset of customers, although one could grow into the other.

Dense Compute nodes were designed for customers with less than 500GB of data in their data warehouses or for customers with more than 500GB of data and are focused primarily on high performance. Dense Storage nodes are aimed at organizations with much greater data warehousing needs—even up to hundreds of terabytes.

Redshift clusters of either node are available in the U.S. East (Northern Virginia), U.S. West (Oregon), E.U. (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) regions.