JA EN
shiichan

Redshift's RG instances have landed on the stability-first trailing track!

AWS What's New ★★★★ View Markdown
#aws#infrastructure

Hey everyone, it's me, shiichan! Today I've got an instance-related update from Amazon Redshift to share with you.

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS's "What's New" post, Amazon Redshift's Graviton-based RG instances (rg.large and rg.12xlarge) are now available on the trailing track, starting with patch P202.

The story so far

Redshift's maintenance tracks come in two flavors: the leading track, which picks up new changes first, and the trailing track, which applies versions only after they've already been validated on the leading track. The trailing track is meant for customers who prioritize stability for production workloads. Until now, RG instances were only available on the leading track, so if you wanted RG's performance, you had to accept the leading track's faster pace of change too.

What changes

Production workloads running on the trailing track can now move to RG instances as well. As long as you're on patch P202 or later, you can stay on the trailing track and still get RG's benefits.

Here's what RG instances bring on the performance side.

  • Up to 2.4x faster query performance compared to RA3 instances
  • 30% lower price per vCPU compared to RA3

This is a nice win for data engineers who want to prioritize stability but still want Graviton's performance and cost advantages.

Dive Deep

The requirements and process are straightforward.

  • Requirement: you must be on the trailing track, at patch P202 or later
  • Availability: all AWS Regions where RG is generally available
  • How to start: provision a new cluster, or resize an existing cluster to rg.large / rg.12xlarge
  • Access methods: AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs

For more on patch versions and the trailing track, check the Amazon Redshift cluster versions documentation.

Wrap-up

  • Redshift's RG instances (rg.large / rg.12xlarge) are now available on the trailing track from patch P202 onward
  • Up to 2.4x faster query performance than RA3, at 30% lower price per vCPU
  • Available in all Regions where RG is generally available, for both new clusters and resizes
  • You can get started via the Console, CLI, or SDKs

If you're running production Redshift on the stability-focused trailing track, this is exactly the update you've been waiting for!

Related posts