Working with performance metrics in the CloudWatch console - Amazon Redshift

Working with performance metrics in the CloudWatch console

When working with Amazon Redshift metrics in the CloudWatch console, keep a couple of things in mind:

  • Query and load performance data is only available in the Amazon Redshift console.

  • Some Metrics in the CloudWatch have different units than those used in the Amazon Redshift console. For example, WriteThroughput is displayed in GB/s (as compared to Bytes/s in CloudWatch), which is a more relevant unit for the typical storage space of a node.

When working with Amazon Redshift metrics in the CloudWatch console, command line tools, or an Amazon SDK, keep these concepts in mind:

  1. First, specify the metric dimension to work with. A dimension is a name-value pair that helps you to uniquely identify a metric. The dimensions for Amazon Redshift are ClusterIdentifier and NodeID. In the CloudWatch console, the Redshift Cluster and Redshift Node views are provided to easily select cluster and node-specific dimensions. For more information about dimensions, see Dimensions in the CloudWatch Developer Guide.

  2. Then, specify the metric name, such as ReadIOPS.

The following table summarizes the types of Amazon Redshift metric dimensions that are available to you. Depending on the metric, data is available in either 1-minute or 5-minute intervals at no charge. For more information, see Amazon Redshift metrics.

CloudWatch namespace Dimension Description
AWS/Redshift NodeID

Filters requested data that is specific to the nodes of a cluster. NodeID is either "Leader", "Shared", or "Compute-N" where N is 0, 1, ... for the number of nodes in the cluster. "Shared" means that the cluster has only one node, that is the leader node and compute node are combined.
ClusterIdentifier

Filters requested data that is specific to the cluster. Metrics that are specific to clusters include HealthStatus, MaintenanceMode, and DatabaseConnections. General metrics for this dimension (for example, ReadIOPS) that are also metrics of nodes represent an aggregate of the node metric data. Take care in interpreting these metrics because they aggregate behavior of leader and compute nodes.

Working with gateway and volume metrics is similar to working with other service metrics. Many of the common tasks are outlined in the CloudWatch documentation, including the following: