Provisioned Timestream Compute Units

With provisioned Timestream Compute Units (TCUs), you can allocate a fixed number of TCUs to your account, ensuring predictable performance and cost for your queries. By provisioning TCUs, you gain greater control over compute capacity, enabling you to optimize both performance and query costs based on your application's specific needs.

Benefits of Provisioning TCU

Provisioning TCU provides several benefits for customers with dedicated workloads, including:

How Provisioned TCU Works

Each Timestream Compute Unit (TCU) is comprised of 4 vCPUs and 16GB of memory. To provision TCUs, use the AWS Management Console or the UpdateAccountSettings API operation to allocate a fixed number of TCUs to your account, which are then dedicated to your workload. This ensures predictable performance and cost for your queries. The minimum number of provisioned TCUs is 4, with subsequent increments also in multiples of 4 (e.g., 4, 8, 12, 16). Once provisioned, you can run your query workloads uninterrupted. As your workload demands change, you can adjust the provisioned TCUs using the AWS Management Console or the UpdateAccountSettings API operation at any time. However, you can only decrease the number of TCUs after a minimum of 1 hour has passed since provisioning them.

For example, if you provision 8 TCUs at 10:00 AM, you will be charged for a minimum of 1 hour, until 11:00 AM. During this time, you can increment the TCUs to 12 or more, but you cannot decrement them until 11:00 AM.

The time it takes to provision the requested Timestream Compute Units (TCUs) in your account varies depending on the number of TCUs requested. For example, provisioning 100 TCUs could take up to 30 minutes. However, you will only be charged for the resources once they are provisioned and available to serve your query workload. To ensure a smooth experience during planned increases in usage, we recommend provisioning the required resources in advance. This allows sufficient time for the resources to become available and ensures that your workload can be handled without interruption.

Monitoring Provisioned TCU usage

To monitor your provisioned TCU usage, you can use the following CloudWatch metrics:

Modifying your Provisioned TCUs

You can adjust the number of provisioned Timestream Compute Units (TCUs) to match your changing workload demands using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or AWS SDKs.

To view the current number of provisioned TCUs in your account, navigate to the "Admin Dashboard" section in the AWS Management Console. From there, you can easily monitor and manage your provisioned TCUs.

In the Query Compute Settings, you can verify that the compute mode is set to "Provisioned" and view the current number of provisioned Timestream Compute Units (TCUs) in your account, which is displayed as "Active Query TCU". The default value is 0. You need to provision TCUs before you run your query workload.

To modify the query compute settings, click the "Modify" button. For instance, if you want to increase the provisioned TCUs from 32 to 64, simply enter your desired target value (64) in the "Target Query TCU" field. Additionally, you can specify an Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) topic to receive a notification when the provisioning process is complete.

After confirming your desired configuration by selecting "Save settings", you will see that the current request status is updated to "Pending". The "Target Query TCU" field will now reflect the desired number of compute units, which is 64 in this case, indicating that the provisioning process has been initiated and is awaiting completion.

Once provisioned, the "Active Query TCU" field will be updated to reflect the new provisioned capacity of 64 Timestream Compute Units, indicating that the provisioning process is complete and the additional resources are now available for use in your account.

To reduce the number of provisioned Timestream Compute Units (TCUs) in your account, follow the same steps as before and enter your desired target value. For example, if you want to decrease the provisioned TCUs to 16, simply set the "Target Query TCU" field to 16. Please note that you can only decrease the number of provisioned TCUs after a minimum of 1 hour has passed since the last provisioning request. This means that if you provisioned or modified your TCUs within the last hour, you will need to wait until the 1-hour window has elapsed before you can decrement the TCUs.

After requesting a decrease in provisioned Timestream Compute Units (TCUs), the service will decrement the TCUs when it determines it is safe to do so, which may take up to a few minutes. During this time, the "Target Query TCU" field will continue to display the desired target value, in this case, 16 TCUs, indicating the pending change. Once the decrement is complete, the "Active Query TCU" field will be updated to reflect the new provisioned capacity of 16 TCUs.

Once the request is successfully completed, the "Active Query TCU" field will be updated to reflect the new provisioned capacity of 16 Timestream Compute Units (TCUs). If you no longer anticipate any query workload, you can further decrement the provisioned TCUs to 0, effectively releasing all provisioned resources and stopping any associated charges.

Pricing for Provisioned TCUs

You are charged for the duration of the Timestream Compute Units (TCUs) provisioned in your account, with a minimum charge of 1 hour. After the first hour, the TCUs are metered per second.

To calculate the total metered hours, multiply the number of provisioned TCUs by the duration of use. For example: If you provision 16 TCUs for 2 hours, the total metered hours are 16 TCU * 2 hours = 32 TCU-hours. If you provision 16 TCUs for 4 hours, then decrement to 8 TCUs and use them for 6 hours, the total metered hours are 16 TCU * 4 hours + 8 TCU * 6 hours = 112 TCU-hours.

Your total spend will depend on the prevailing TCU-hour cost in your region. Please refer to the Amazon Timestream Pricing page for detailed information.

Best Practices for managing Provisioned TCU

To get the most out of the Provisioned TCU feature, follow these best practices: