title: Redshift as a Web App Backend?
body: <p>I am building an application (using Django's ORM) that will ingest a lot of events, let's say 50/s (1-2k per msg). Initially some "real time" processing and monitoring of the events is in scope so I'll be using redis to keep some of that data to make decisions, expunging them when it makes sense. I was going to persist all of the entities, including events in Postgres for "at rest" storage for now.</p>
  
  <p>In the future I will need "analytical" capability for dashboards and other features. I want to use Amazon Redshift for this. I considered just going straight for Redshift and skipping Postgres. But I also see folks say that it should play more of a passive role. Maybe I could keep a window of data in the SQL backend and archive to Redshift regularly.</p>
  
  <p>My question is:</p>
  
  <p>Is it even normal to use something like Redshift as a backend for web applications or does it typically play more of a passive role? If not is it realistic to think I can scale the Postgres enough for the event data to start with only that? Also if not, does the "window of data and archival" method make sense?</p>
  
  <p>EDIT Here are some things I've seen before writing the post:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Some say <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Can-AWS-Redshift-be-used-49531.S.5874931438192705544" rel="noreferrer">"yes go for it"</a> regarding the should I use Redshift for this question.</li>
  <li>Some say <a href="http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-using-Amazon-Redshift" rel="noreferrer">"eh not performant enough for most web apps"</a> and support the <em>front it with a postgres database</em> camp.</li>
  </ul>