Redshift Data Sharing for Cross-Cluster Access
A company maintains an Amazon Redshift provisioned cluster that the company uses for extract, transform, and load (ETL) operations to support critical analysis tasks. A sales team within the company maintains a Redshift cluster that the sales team uses for business intelligence (BI) tasks. The sales team recently requested access to the data that is in the ETL Redshift cluster so the team can perform weekly summary analysis tasks. The sales team needs to join data from the ETL cluster with data that is in the sales team's BI cluster. The company needs a solution that will share the ETL cluster data with the sales team without interrupting the critical analysis tasks. The solution must minimize usage of the computing resources of the ETL cluster. Which solution will meet these requirements?
Community Votes
70% of anonymous learners picked answer A. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.
Community Insight
The core concept is minimizing resource usage on the source (producer) cluster while enabling cross-cluster queries, which Redshift Data Sharing achieves by decoupling compute from storage access.
This question tests the use of Amazon Redshift Data Sharing to securely share live data between clusters without impacting producer performance. The correct solution leverages this feature to allow the sales team to join ETL data with their BI cluster data efficiently.
Candidates often choose Option D (S3/Spectrum) because they focus on the 'weekly' frequency or misinterpret Spectrum as having zero impact, failing to realize that Data Sharing is specifically designed for this low-overhead cross-cluster scenario.
Community Discussion (12 comments)
Comments & Corrections
No comments yet — spotted an error or have a note? Share it below.
Expert Analysis
Why the Answer Is Correct
Option A is the correct choice because Amazon Redshift Data Sharing allows a producer cluster (ETL) to share live data with consumer clusters (BI) without duplicating the data. This mechanism ensures that queries run on the consumer cluster's resources, thereby minimizing the impact on the ETL cluster's computing power and preventing interruptions to critical analysis tasks.Why the Other Options Are Wrong
Options B and C involve granting direct access to the ETL cluster. This would cause the sales team's queries to compete for CPU and memory with the ETL workloads, violating the requirement to minimize resource usage and avoid interruption. Option D involves unloading data to S3 and using Redshift Spectrum. While Spectrum queries also use consumer cluster resources, it introduces latency due to data movement and storage management, making Data Sharing the more native and efficient solution for inter-cluster sharing.Community Comment Notes
The community largely agrees with Option A, citing official documentation that describes Data Sharing as ideal for separating ETL and BI workloads. Some users like Lucas_rfsb and jasango argue for Option D, claiming Spectrum has zero impact, but they overlook that Data Sharing is the specific architectural pattern for this problem. As arvehisa noted, "redshift data sharing" is the key term here. One user correctly pointed out that materialized views are limited to a single cluster context, ruling out B.Official Reference
Exam Strategy
When a question mentions sharing data between clusters while protecting the source cluster's performance, look for "Data Sharing" or "Data Exchange" rather than replication or direct access. Always prioritize solutions that keep compute isolated to the querying side.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why not use Redshift Spectrum instead of Data Sharing?
Spectrum requires data in S3 and is best for ad-hoc queries on large datasets. Data Sharing is optimized for live, structured data exchange between clusters with lower overhead.
Does Data Sharing copy the data to the consumer cluster?
No, it does not duplicate the data. It provides a pointer to the producer's data, allowing the consumer to query it directly using its own compute resources.
Related Analysis
Practice All DEA-C01 Questions
Access 100 questions with complete answers and detailed explanations.
View Full DEA-C01 Practice Test →