AWS Quick Starts — Customer Ready Solutions

Modern Data Warehouse on AWS

Modernize your EDW capabilities with Tableau Server, Amazon Redshift, Amazon RDS

Deploy on AWS into a new VPC

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Quick Start architecture for data warehouse modernization on the AWS Cloud

Quick Start architecture for data warehouse modernization on AWS

This Quick Start is first in a set of customer-ready solutions, which are ready-to-deploy reference architectures and best practices that address specific use cases or business processes. 

For detailed information about this reference architecture, view the Quick Start deployment guide. For additional Quick Starts, see the complete catalog.

To deploy a Tableau Server standalone or cluster (multi-node) environment on AWS, see the Quick Start for Tableau Server.

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This Quick Start helps you deploy a modern enterprise data warehouse (EDW) environment that is based on Amazon Redshift and includes the analytics and data visualization capabilities of Tableau Server.

This AWS-validated architecture includes an Amazon Redshift data warehouse, which is an enterprise-class relational database query and management system. Amazon Redshift achieves efficient storage and optimum query performance through massively parallel processing, columnar data storage, and efficient, targeted data compression encoding schemes. 

The Quick Start deploys Tableau Server for BI and data visualization capabilities. With Tableau Server deployed on AWS, enterprises can take advantage of collaborative analytics and the price/performance economies and agility provided by the cloud. The Quick Start includes a sample dataset that's loaded to an Amazon Redshift cluster to support efficient creation of aggregates at large data scale. You can also choose to load your own dataset.

This reference architecture is automated by AWS CloudFormation templates that you can customize to meet your specific requirements.

  • What you'll build

    The Quick Start architecture for the EDW includes the following infrastructure:
    • A virtual private cloud (VPC) with multiple public and private subnets across multiple Availability Zones, so that AWS resources can be deployed in highly available configurations.
    • In a public subnet, a Linux bastion host in an Auto Scaling group to provide secure access to Linux instances located in the public and private subnets.
    • In a public subnet, a Remote Desktop Gateway instance in an Auto Scaling group to provide secure access to Microsoft Windows instances located in the private and public subnets. 
    • In the public subnets, NAT gateways to provide outbound Internet connectivity for instances in the private subnets.
    • AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles to enable AWS resources created through the Quick Start to access other AWS resources when required. For example, these IAM roles enable access to data in Amazon S3, enable Amazon Redshift to copy data from Amazon S3 into its tables, and enable association of the generated IAM role with the Amazon Redshift cluster.

    The Quick Start gives you the option to build a new VPC infrastructure with these components or use your existing VPC infrastructure. Within this infrastructure, the Quick Start deploys:
    • Amazon Redshift as the data warehouse. The Quick Start uses Amazon Redshift to provide full fact tables, ad-hoc exploration and aggregation, and filtered drill-downs. Amazon Redshift is optimized for computationally intensive workloads such as computation of aggregates and complex joins, and supports analysis on both Microsoft Windows and macOS.
    • Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store datasets, dashboards, and SQL queries required to configure AWS database services and to compute aggregates for the sample dataset.
    • A sample dataset, stored in Amazon S3, that demonstrates parallel data load to Amazon Redshift and computation of aggregates at large data scale.
    • Amazon RDS with PostgreSQL, which provides the Quick Start with high-query-volume aggregate tables that feed scale-out dashboards. Amazon RDS is deployed in multiple Availability Zones for high availability.
    • A single-instance deployment of Tableau Server with the ability to host and serve analytics dashboards and workbooks, which is supported by the trial license. The Quick Start also deploys a sample Tableau Server dashboard that demonstrates how to connect to multiple data sources in AWS to optimize performance.
    • A SQL worker instance that is used to coordinate and issue SQL commands, consistent with the sample dataset, to load data in parallel from Amazon S3 to Amazon Redshift, to set up a database link from Amazon RDS to Amazon Redshift, to define the desired aggregate computations in Amazon Redshift, and to publish computed aggregates to Amazon RDS. 
       
    For details, see the Quick Start deployment guide.

  • Deployment details

    You can build your EDW environment in a few simple steps:

    1. Sign up for an AWS account, if you don't already have one, at https://aws.amazon.com.
    2. Launch the Quick Start into a new VPC, if you want to build a new AWS infrastructure.
      —or—
      Launch the Quick Start into an existing VPC, if you already have your AWS environment set up.
      Each deployment takes about 50 minutes, plus an additional 20-25 minutes if you choose to load the sample dataset. 
    3. Log in to Tableau Server and view the data sources and dashboards. 


    The Quick Start includes parameters that you can customize. For example, you can change instance types, specify the number of nodes in the Amazon Redshift cluster, customize the Amazon RDS configuration, and choose to load your own dataset.

    For complete details, see the Quick Start deployment guide.

  • Cost and licenses

    You are responsible for the cost of the AWS services used while running this Quick Start reference deployment. There is no additional cost for using the Quick Start. See the pricing pages for each AWS service you will be using for cost estimates.

    The AWS CloudFormation templates for this Quick Start include configuration parameters that you can customize. Some of these settings, such as instance type, will affect the cost of deployment. See the pricing pages for each AWS service you will be using for cost estimates.

    You can choose to bring your own Tableau Server license and use it when launching the Quick Start. If you do not have a Tableau Server license or would prefer to launch the Quick Start as a trial, the Quick Start will provide a 14-day Tableau Server evaluation license. At the end of the 14-day trial, you must enter a product key to continue using Tableau Server. For more information about Tableau Server licenses, see the Tableau website.

    To develop reports and dashboards to publish to Tableau Server, you will need Tableau Desktop, which you can license separately from Tableau Server.

Consulting and managed services

AWS big data competency partners offer consulting services to help you quickly discover value from this data warehouse modernization solution. Follow these links to find more about these partners and their consulting offers, and to request more information or support.

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