Managing SPICE memory capacity - Amazon QuickSight

Managing SPICE memory capacity

SPICE (Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine) is the robust in-memory engine that QuickSight uses. It's engineered to rapidly perform advanced calculations and serve data. In Enterprise edition, data stored in SPICE is encrypted at rest. For more information, see Data encryption in Amazon QuickSight.

SPICE capacity is allocated separately per AWS Region. For each AWS account, SPICE capacity is shared by all the people using QuickSight in a single AWS Region. The other AWS Regions have no SPICE capacity unless you choose to purchase some.

QuickSight administrators can view how much SPICE capacity you have in each AWS Region and how much of it is currently in use. Administrators can also purchase additional SPICE capacity or release unused SPICE capacity. You can only release SPICE capacity that isn't currently used by a dataset. Datasets in SPICE stay there until someone remove them from SPICE. To change that, you can either delete the datasets or change them so they aren't stored in SPICE.

Purchasing or releasing SPICE capacity only affects the capacity for the currently selected AWS Region. Each AWS account can have a separate QuickSight subscription and can be used in multiple AWS Regions. For information about additional SPICE pricing, see Amazon QuickSight pricing.

Before you make any changes to SPICE capacity, make sure that you're using the correct AWS account and AWS Region. It's possible to be using different AWS accounts or AWS Regions at the same time in different contexts, as follows:

  • If you open QuickSight using the http://quicksight.aws.amazon.com URL, QuickSight automatically selects your account and AWS Region. You can't view your AWS account from QuickSight. We recommend using a different method to open QuickSight when you want to work with SPICE capacity.

  • If you open QuickSight from the AWS Management Console, QuickSight opens in the account that you used to sign in to that console. However, it opens in the last AWS Region that you selected in QuickSight. The AWS Management Console and the QuickSight console each have an AWS Region selector that works independently from the other. Changing the selected AWS Region in the AWS console doesn't change the AWS Region in QuickSight.

  • If you use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to run QuickSight commands, make sure to provide the relevant AWS account for each QuickSight API operation you use. The AWS Region isn't always required, and if you don't provide it, the AWS CLI uses your default AWS Region from your AWS configuration. We recommend that you always explicitly provide the AWS Region, to make sure you apply the command to the correct AWS Region.

You must be signed in as a QuickSight administrator to view or manage SPICE capacity.

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