Most Cost-Effective Solution for Long-Term Usage of AWS Redshift

Correct Answer - C.

AWS documentation mentions the following:

If you intend to keep your Amazon Redshift cluster running continuously for a prolonged period, you should consider purchasing reserved node offerings.

These offerings provide significant savings over on-demand pricing, but they require you to reserve compute nodes and commit to paying for those nodes for either a one-year or three-year duration.

For more information on Reserved Nodes in Redshift, please visit the following URL:

In this scenario, the company plans to use AWS Redshift continuously for the next 3 years. The most cost-effective solution would be to consider using Reserved Instances for the Redshift Cluster.

Reserved Instances provide a significant discount compared to On-Demand instances, which are charged at a higher rate. By purchasing a Reserved Instance, the company can reserve capacity for the Redshift cluster for a specific period, typically for 1 or 3 years, at a lower hourly rate compared to On-Demand instances. This means that the company can save up to 75% on the hourly rate by using Reserved Instances.

Enabling automated backup is a best practice to ensure data durability and recoverability, but it does not directly impact the cost of using Redshift.

Considering not using a cluster for the Redshift nodes would not be practical, as Redshift is a columnar data store designed to work with large data sets, and a cluster provides scalability and fault tolerance.

Therefore, the most cost-effective solution for a company planning to use AWS Redshift continuously for the next 3 years is to consider using Reserved Instances for the Redshift Cluster.