Amazon Web Services (AWS) previews a take on data warehouses at the re:Invent user conference-- Redshift, a cloud-based data warehouse promising better scalability and performances than on-premises equivalents.
According to the company Redshift not only costs less (on a per-terabyte basis) but also liberates admins from labour-intensive tasks such as monitoring, tuning, backup, software patching and fault recovery.
Customers can launch a Redshift cluster through the AWS Management consoles-- with sizes starting from "few hundred gigabytes" to over a petabyte. The system uses relational database technology, with SQL as query language, and is compatible with current BI tools. Certification comes from Jaspersoft and Microstrategy, with more set to follow.
Redshift beta customers include Flipboard, NASA, Netflix and Schumacher Group.
The system is currently available as a limited preview and costs at around $1000 per terabyte per year.