Relocating a cluster - Amazon Redshift
LimitationsTurning on cluster relocationManaging relocation using the consoleManaging relocation using the Amazon Redshift CLI

Relocating a cluster

By using relocation in Amazon Redshift, you allow Amazon Redshift to move a cluster to another Availability Zone (AZ) without any loss of data or changes to your applications. With relocation, you can continue operations when there is an interruption of service on your cluster with minimal impact.

When cluster relocation is turned on, Amazon Redshift might choose to relocate clusters in some situations. In particular, this happens where issues in the current Availability Zone prevent optimal cluster operation or to improve service availability. You can also invoke the relocation function in cases where resource constraints in a given Availability Zone are disrupting cluster operations. An example is the ability to resume or resize a cluster. Amazon Redshift offers the relocation feature at no extra charge.

When an Amazon Redshift cluster is relocated to a new Availability Zone, the new cluster has the same endpoint as the original cluster. Your applications can reconnect to the endpoint and continue operations without modifications or loss of data. However, relocation might not always be possible due to potential resource constraints in a given Availability Zone.

Amazon Redshift cluster relocation is supported for the RA3 instance types only. RA3 instance types use Redshift Managed Storage (RMS) as a durable storage layer. The latest copy of a cluster's data is always available in other Availability Zones in an AWS Region. In other words, you can relocate an Amazon Redshift cluster to another Availability Zone without any loss of data.

When you turn on relocation for your cluster, Amazon Redshift migrates your cluster to be behind a proxy. Doing this helps implement location-independent access to a cluster's compute resources. The migration causes the cluster to be rebooted. When a cluster is relocated to another Availability Zone, an outage occurs while the new cluster is brought back online in the new Availability Zone. However, you don't have to make any changes to your applications because the cluster endpoint remains unchanged even after the cluster is relocated to the new Availability Zone.

Cluster relocation is disabled by default on all RA3 clusters. Amazon Redshift assigns 5439 as the default port while creating a provisioned cluster. You can change to another port from the port range of 5431-5455 or 8191-8215. (Don't change to a port outside the ranges. It results in an error.) To change the default port for a provisioned cluster, use the Amazon Redshift console, AWS CLI, or Amazon Redshift API. To change the default port for a serverless workgroup, use the AWS CLI or the Amazon Redshift Serverless API.

If you turn on relocation and you currently use the leader node IP address to access your cluster, make sure to change that access. Instead, use the IP address associated with the cluster's virtual private cloud (VPC) endpoint. To find this cluster IP address, find and use the VPC endpoint in the Network and security section of the cluster details page. To get more details on the VPC endpoint, sign in to the Amazon VPC console.

You can also use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) command describe-vpc-endpoints to get the elastic network interface associated with the endpoint. You can use the describe-network-interfaces command to get the associated IP address. For more information on Amazon Redshift AWS CLI commands, see Available commands in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

Limitations

When using Amazon Redshift relocation, be aware of the following limitations:

  • Cluster relocation might not be possible in all scenarios due to potential resource limitations in a given Availability Zone. If this happens, Amazon Redshift doesn't change the original cluster.

  • Relocation isn't supported on DC2 instance families of products.

  • You can't perform a relocation across AWS Regions.

  • Amazon Redshift relocation defaults to port number 5439. You can also change to another port in the ranges 5431-5455 or 8191-8215.

Turning on cluster relocation

You can turn on and manage cluster relocation from the Amazon Redshift console, AWS CLI, and Amazon Redshift API.

To turn on cluster relocation, define a subnet group that includes multiple Availability Zones. If Amazon Redshift identifies more than one accessible Availability Zone, Amazon Redshift automatically chooses from the list of accessible Availability Zones to relocate the cluster.

After relocation is complete, you use the same endpoint to access the cluster. Amazon Redshift deletes the original cluster's compute resources and returns them to the resource pool.

Managing relocation using the console

You can manage the settings for cluster relocation using the Amazon Redshift console.

Turning on relocation when creating a new cluster

Use the following procedure to turn on relocation when creating a new cluster.

To turn on relocation for a new cluster

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Redshift console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/redshiftv2/.

  2. On the navigation menu, choose Clusters.

  3. Choose Create cluster to create a new cluster. For more information on how to create a cluster, see Get started with Amazon Redshift provisioned data warehouses in Amazon Redshift Getting Started Guide.

  4. Under Backup, for Cluster relocation, choose Enabled. Relocation is turned off by default.

  5. Choose Create cluster.

Modifying relocation for an existing cluster

Use the following procedure to change the relocation setting for an existing cluster.

To modify the relocation setting for an existing cluster

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Redshift console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/redshiftv2/.

  2. On the navigation menu, choose Clusters. The clusters for your account in the current AWS Region are listed. A subset of properties of each cluster is displayed in columns in the list.

  3. Choose the name of the cluster that you want to modify from the list. The cluster details page appears.

  4. Choose the Maintenance tab, then in the Backup details section choose Edit.

  5. Under Backup, choose Enabled. Relocation is turned off by default.

  6. Choose Modify cluster.

Relocating a cluster

Use the following procedure to manually relocate a cluster to another Availability Zone. This is especially useful when you want to test your network setup in secondary Availability Zones or when you are running into resource constraints in the current Availability Zone.

To relocate a cluster to another Availability Zone

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Redshift console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/redshiftv2/.

  2. On the navigation menu, choose Clusters. The clusters for your account in the current AWS Region are listed. A subset of properties of each cluster is displayed in columns in the list.

  3. Choose the name of the cluster that you want to move from the list. The cluster details page appears.

  4. For Actions, choose Relocate. The Relocate cluster page appears.

  5. (Optional) Choose an Availability Zone. If you don't choose an Availability Zone, Amazon Redshift chooses one for you.

Amazon Redshift starts the relocation and displays the cluster as relocating. After the relocation completes, the cluster status changes to available.

Managing relocation using the Amazon Redshift CLI

You can manage the settings for cluster relocation using the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI).

With the AWS CLI, the following example command creates an Amazon Redshift cluster named mycluster that has relocation turned on.

aws redshift create-cluster --cluster-identifier mycluster --number-of-nodes 2 --master-username enter a username --master-user-password enter a password --node-type ra3.4xlarge --port 5439 --availability-zone-relocation

If your current cluster is using a different port, you must modify it to use from the port range of 5431-5455 or 8191-8215 before modifying it to turn on relocation. The default is 5439. The following example command modifies the port in case your cluster doesn't use one from the given range.

aws redshift modify-cluster --cluster-identifier mycluster --port 5439

The following example command includes the availability-zone-relocation parameter on the Amazon Redshift cluster.

aws redshift modify-cluster --cluster-identifier mycluster --availability-zone-relocation

The following example command turns off the availability-zone-relocation parameter on the Amazon Redshift cluster.

aws redshift modify-cluster --cluster-identifier mycluster --no-availability-zone-relocation

The following example command invokes relocation on the Amazon Redshift cluster.

aws redshift modify-cluster --cluster-identifier mycluster --availability-zone us-east-1b