How to Resolve “quota exceeded” in Redshift

Galaxy Glossary

How do I fix the “quota exceeded” error in Amazon Redshift?

The error appears when a schema, user, or cluster exceeds its assigned storage quota, blocking further writes.

Welcome to the Galaxy, Guardian!
You'll be receiving a confirmation email

Follow us on twitter :)

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Description

Example H2

Example H3

What triggers the “quota exceeded” error in Redshift?

Redshift raises the message when a user, schema, or the entire cluster surpasses its defined disk-space limit. Administrators can create quotas with ALTER USER or ALTER SCHEMA. Once the limit is hit, any CREATE TABLE, COPY, or INSERT fails until space is freed or the quota is raised.

How do I check current quota usage?

Query system view SVV_SCHEMA_QUOTA_STATE or SVV_USER_QUOTA_STATE.These catalog views show quota_mb, used_mb, and percent_used, letting you identify the object that breached its cap.

SELECT schema_name, quota_mb, used_mb, percent_used FROM SVV_SCHEMA_QUOTA_STATE ORDER BY percent_used DESC;

How can I raise or remove a quota?

Use ALTER SCHEMA … QUOTA or ALTER USER … QUOTA. Setting QUOTA UNLIMITED removes the cap. Only superusers can run these commands.

--Raise Orders schema to 500 GB ALTER SCHEMA orders QUOTA 500000;. --Remove quota for analytics user ALTER USER analytics QUOTA UNLIMITED;

What quick fixes free space immediately?

Delete unneeded tables, vacuum to reclaim deleted rows, or UNLOAD large result sets to S3 and TRUNCATE the staging tables.Always commit after deletions so space is actually released.

Example cleanup for an ecommerce workload

--Drop obsolete 2022 order items partition drop table orderitems_2022; VACUUM orders; COMMIT;

Can I prevent “quota exceeded” proactively?

Monitor SVL_QLOG and CloudWatch metrics, set alerts at 80 % usage, and implement lifecycle jobs that archive historical data to S3 Glacier. Apply sensible quotas per team to avoid cluster-wide outages.

Why How to Resolve “quota exceeded” in Redshift is important

How to Resolve “quota exceeded” in Redshift Example Usage


/* Copy daily Orders from S3 into staging; raises error if 50 GB quota is hit */
COPY staging.orders
FROM 's3://company-data/orders/2023-10/'
CREDENTIALS 'aws_iam_role=arn:aws:iam::123456:role/RedshiftRole'
FORMAT AS PARQUET;

How to Resolve “quota exceeded” in Redshift Syntax


--Create a schema quota
ALTER SCHEMA schema_name QUOTA quota_in_mb | UNLIMITED;

--Create a user quota
ALTER USER user_name QUOTA quota_in_mb | UNLIMITED;

--Check schema quota usage
SELECT *
FROM   SVV_SCHEMA_QUOTA_STATE;

--Check user quota usage
SELECT *
FROM   SVV_USER_QUOTA_STATE;

--E-commerce example: limit staging schema to 50 GB
ALTER SCHEMA staging QUOTA 50000;

--Remove quota from reporting user
ALTER USER reporting QUOTA UNLIMITED;

Common Mistakes

Assuming VACUUM frees space instantly. Redshift only reclaims disk after VACUUM *and* a COMMIT. Forgetting the commit keeps space allocated.
Raising the user quota but ignoring schema quota. Both limits apply; if either is exceeded, writes fail. Always inspect both SVV_USER_QUOTA_STATE and SVV_SCHEMA_QUOTA_STATE.