In the serverless workgroup configuration, in the Permissions you need to add the role you use for S3 to the list of Associated IAM roles Answer from Gonzalo Herreros on repost.aws
AWS
docs.aws.amazon.com › amazon redshift › management guide › what is amazon redshift? › comparing amazon redshift serverless to an amazon redshift provisioned data warehouse
Comparing Amazon Redshift Serverless to an Amazon Redshift provisioned data warehouse - Amazon Redshift
For Amazon Redshift Serverless, some concepts and features are different than their corresponding feature for an Amazon Redshift provisioned data warehouse. For instance, one contrasting comparison is that Amazon Redshift Serverless doesn't have the concept of a cluster or node.
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In the serverless workgroup configuration, in the Permissions you need to add the role you use for S3 to the list of Associated IAM roles
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To further expand on my colleague’s response, you can associate the role with the IAM cluster via the console.
Navigate to the cluster you want to update and select Actions -> Manage IAM Roles.
Specify the role to associate from the list or by directly adding the ARN.
Reference
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c-getting-started-using-spectrum-add-role.html
Redshift Serverless or Aurora + S3 Tables? Hands-on experiences wanted!
If you want to have your data on S3 (e.g. parquet format) and use Redshift Spectrum, then do NOT use Redshift Serverless, because it is very expensive for that. Redshift Serverless is good when you have a lot of data (Pentabytes) in regular tables. More on reddit.com
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October 8, 2025BEWARE Redshift Serverless + Zero-ETL
I might be being a bit immature, but I might go as far as to say just don't use Redshift at all, if you have the choice hahaha (I hope I don't get flamed for this) More on reddit.com
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March 11, 2025Is Redshift Serverless same as Redshift?
Redshift Serverless is the serverless side of your typical Redshift Instance. For the most part it’s the same excluding costs and instance speed/nodes as serverless manages that aspect differently. We’ve been using it the same way as we use standard instances since preview. If you are only using it every 4 hours for a few seconds/minutes it’s probably more cost effective than a typical instance with auto-shutoff, BUT, without knowing actual times used and workloads required I don’t think I could definitively answer that. More on reddit.com
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August 3, 2022How do I get the details about a Spectrum Scan Error on an external table on Redshift Serverless? - Stack Overflow
According to the list of available monitoring views at the bottom of Monitoring queries and workloads with Amazon Redshift Serverless, sys_external_query_error is not available in Redshift Serverless. Which view should I use to see the details about a Spectrum Scan Error on an external table ... More on stackoverflow.com
Videos
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AWS
docs.aws.amazon.com › amazon redshift › management guide › amazon redshift serverless
Amazon Redshift Serverless - Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift Serverless makes it convenient for you to run and scale analytics without having to provision and manage an on-premises data warehouse.
Amazon Web Services
pages.awscloud.com › rs › 112-TZM-766 › images › Redshift Fundamentals 2023-05-24.pdf pdf
Max out your data lake insights with a Serverless ...
Automatically scale-out to multiple Redshift workgroups from a single endpoint in seconds and scale back down
LinkedIn
linkedin.com › pulse › querying-s3-data-redshift-serverless-spectrum-cdk-guide-khan-j3avf
Querying S3 Data in Redshift Serverless with Spectrum
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Medium
medium.com › @naren3883 › choosing-between-aws-redshift-vs-aws-redshift-serverless-b2b5aee83215
Choosing Between AWS Redshift Vs AWS Redshift Serverless | by Narendra Sai Srinivasula | Medium
February 2, 2024 - Redshift Serverless: Fully managed service with automatic scaling, eliminating cluster management tasks.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/aws › redshift serverless or aurora + s3 tables? hands-on experiences wanted!
r/aws on Reddit: Redshift Serverless or Aurora + S3 Tables? Hands-on experiences wanted!
October 8, 2025 -
I'm currently evaluating Redshift Serverless and Aurora + S3 Tables for a data analytics project. Who has hands-on experiences with both options? I'd be very interested in your advice? What are the differences, that I need to be aware of?
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If you want to have your data on S3 (e.g. parquet format) and use Redshift Spectrum, then do NOT use Redshift Serverless, because it is very expensive for that. Redshift Serverless is good when you have a lot of data (Pentabytes) in regular tables.
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Redshift Serverless is optimized for analytics workloads with large-scale, columnar queries and BI tools. Aurora + S3 (Athena/Glue) is cheaper for ad-hoc queries, smaller datasets, or semi-structured data, but can be slower for complex joins or aggregations. Consider cost, concurrency, and query patterns before deciding.
Tutorials Dojo
tutorialsdojo.com › home › others › amazon redshift serverless
Amazon Redshift Serverless Cheat Sheet
July 19, 2024 - Seamlessly integrates with Amazon ... lake using Redshift Spectrum. It is effective for Extract, Transform, and Load operations, allowing data engineers to transform and analyze data with minimal infrastructure management. Amazon Redshift Serverless offers the following features ...
Amazon Web Services
aws.amazon.com › analytics › amazon redshift › pricing
Amazon Redshift Pricing
1 week ago - You are charged for the number of bytes scanned by Redshift Spectrum, rounded up to the next megabyte, with a 10 MB minimum per query. There are no charges for Data Definition Language (DDL) statements such as CREATE/ALTER/DROP TABLE for managing partitions and failed queries. Amazon Redshift Serverless queries of external data in Amazon S3 are not billed for separately and are included in the amount billed for Amazon Redshift Serverless in RPU-hr amounts.
Chariot Solutions
chariotsolutions.com › home › first look at amazon redshift serverless
First Look at Amazon Redshift Serverless — Chariot Solutions
November 21, 2023 - In other cases, such as STV_BLOCKLIST, ... based on these system tables, they’ll need to be rewritten for Serverless. As-of this writing, the documented list of features explicitly calls out Redshift Spectrum as unsupported....
Hevo
hevodata.com › home › learn › data warehousing
Amazon Redshift vs Redshift Spectrum: 6 Differences in 2025
January 12, 2026 - Redshift Spectrum requires an SQL client to be connected to your Redshift cluster. Multiple clusters can access the same S3 dataset at the same time, but you can only query data stored in the same AWS Region.
Medium
medium.com › @surojitchowdhury › exploring-aws-redshift-serverless-a-closer-look-59e531790722
Exploring AWS Redshift Serverless: A Closer Look | by Surojit Chowdhury | Medium
August 23, 2023 - But for this Serverless solution, you only pay-as-you-use for Compute and Storage in RPU-hours and RMS GB-per month basis. This can enable major cost savings for customers, especially for non-prod environments. No additional setups and costs for Concurrency Scaling. Redshift Spectrum costs are all included unlike Provisioned Cluster.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/dataengineering › beware redshift serverless + zero-etl
r/dataengineering on Reddit: BEWARE Redshift Serverless + Zero-ETL
March 11, 2025 -
Our RDS database finally grew to the point where our Metabase dashboards were timing out. We considered Snowflake, DataBricks, and Redshift and finally decided to stay within AWS because of familiarity. Low and behold, there is a Serverless option! This made sense for RDS for us, so why not Redshift as well? And hey! There's a Zero-ETL Integration from RDS to Redshift! So easy!
And it is. Too easy. Redshift Serverless defaults to 128 RPUs, which is very expensive. And we found out the hard way that the Zero-ETL Integration causes Redshift Serverless' query queue to nearly always be active, because it's constantly shuffling transitions over from RDS. Which means that nice auto-pausing feature in Serverless? Yeah, it almost never pauses. We were spending over $1K/day when our target was to start out around that much per MONTH.
So long story short, we ended up choosing a smallish Redshift on-demand instance that costs around $400/month and it's fine for our small team.
My $0.02 -- never use Redshift Serverless with Zero-ETL. Maybe just never use Redshift Serverless, period, unless you're also using Glue or DMS to move data over periodically.
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I might be being a bit immature, but I might go as far as to say just don't use Redshift at all, if you have the choice hahaha (I hope I don't get flamed for this)
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Redshift is not for the faint of heart. It is a steep learning curve but once you figure it out it is the fastest and cheapest petabyte scale warehouse on the market. You can simply never expect it to just work and need to consider careful schema design as well as optimal distribution styles and sort keys to ensure you are getting the most out of your redshift usage
Google
docs.cloud.google.com › looker › amazon redshift, amazon redshift 2.1+, and amazon redshift serverless 2.1+
Amazon Redshift, Amazon Redshift 2.1+, and Amazon Redshift Serverless 2.1+ | Looker | Google Cloud Documentation
Note: For Amazon Redshift Serverless deployments, Looker can connect successfully, but it may encounter issues with killing queries because of a difference in the system tables for retrieving query connection IDs. Optionally, you can also access data from Amazon Redshift using Amazon Redshift Spectrum to access data stored in S3.
AWS
docs.aws.amazon.com › amazon redshift › getting started guide › get started with amazon redshift serverless data warehouses
Get started with Amazon Redshift Serverless data warehouses - Amazon Redshift
If you are a first-time user of ... The basic flow of Amazon Redshift Serverless is to create serverless resources, connect to Amazon Redshift Serverless, load sample data, and then run queries on the data....
RisingWave
risingwave.com › blog › serverless-battle-redshift-spectrum-or-athena-for-your-needs
Serverless Battle: Redshift Spectrum or Athena for Your Needs? - RisingWave: Event Streaming Platform For Agents, Apps, and Analytics
July 2, 2024 - Serverless architecture eliminating the need for infrastructure management. Integration capabilities with AWS services like AWS Glue Data Catalog and Amazon QuickSight. Cost reduction of up to 50% by combining services like AWS Glue, Amazon ...
AWS re:Post
repost.aws › articles › ARL-Xx1-6dTkmsXutL32OPyQ › amazon-redshift-serverless-cross-region-data-lake-query-capability
Amazon Redshift Serverless cross-region data lake query capability | AWS re:Post
May 14, 2025 - Amazon Redshift enables you to ... expands these capabilities by enabling you to query external data in Amazon S3 within the same account, across accounts, and across AWS regions....
Reddit
reddit.com › r/aws › is redshift serverless same as redshift?
r/aws on Reddit: Is Redshift Serverless same as Redshift?
August 3, 2022 -
We have a new request from one of our clients to use Redshift Serverless as the data warehouse. I never used Serverless redshift, I built warehouses with resdhift cluster and designed ETL pipelines using Glue.
Is serverless same as non-serverless? Setting up, ETL connectibility, and everything else is same? Is serverless cost effective? This client usually does not have so much data. so we will be migrating very small data at every 4 hours periodically.
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Redshift Serverless is the serverless side of your typical Redshift Instance. For the most part it’s the same excluding costs and instance speed/nodes as serverless manages that aspect differently. We’ve been using it the same way as we use standard instances since preview. If you are only using it every 4 hours for a few seconds/minutes it’s probably more cost effective than a typical instance with auto-shutoff, BUT, without knowing actual times used and workloads required I don’t think I could definitively answer that.
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Be careful about the costs. If I'm reading it correctly there's a minimum of 32 RPUs for a serverless setup and each one is $0.36/hour, which works out to ~$8,200/month.
Stack Overflow
stackoverflow.com › questions › 77062396 › how-do-i-get-the-details-about-a-spectrum-scan-error-on-an-external-table-on-red
How do I get the details about a Spectrum Scan Error on an external table on Redshift Serverless? - Stack Overflow
The view sys_external_query_detail has an error message column, however it just has the text "Spectrum Scan Error" as the message without any useful details. List of views that I've already tried that aren't available in Redshift Serverless:
Hacker News
news.ycombinator.com › item
AWS Redshift Serverless | Hacker News
December 4, 2021 - The JSON support (SUPER type) is kind of cool, and they are moving towards more “automatic” sorting + partitioning, but it’s just all a bit shit to be honest · We encountered major bugs with data-sharing, our clusters keep insisting that zstd is the best compression format to use for ...