Managing SPICE memory capacity - Amazon QuickSight
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Managing SPICE memory capacity

SPICE (Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine) is the robust in-memory engine that QuickSight uses. It's engineered to rapidly perform advanced calculations and serve data. In Enterprise edition, data stored in SPICE is encrypted at rest. For more information, see Data encryption in Amazon QuickSight.

SPICE capacity is allocated separately per Amazon Web Services Region. For each Amazon Web Services account, SPICE capacity is shared by all the people using QuickSight in a single Amazon Web Services Region. The other Amazon Web Services Regions have no SPICE capacity unless you choose to purchase some.

QuickSight administrators can view how much SPICE capacity you have in each Amazon Web Services Region and how much of it is currently in use. Administrators can also purchase additional SPICE capacity or release unused SPICE capacity. You can only release SPICE capacity that isn't currently used by a dataset. Datasets in SPICE stay there until someone remove them from SPICE. To change that, you can either delete the datasets or change them so they aren't stored in SPICE.

Purchasing or releasing SPICE capacity only affects the capacity for the currently selected Amazon Web Services Region. Each Amazon Web Services account can have a separate QuickSight subscription and can be used in multiple Amazon Web Services Regions. For information about additional SPICE pricing, see Amazon QuickSight pricing.

Before you make any changes to SPICE capacity, make sure that you're using the correct Amazon Web Services account and Amazon Web Services Region. It's possible to be using different Amazon Web Services accounts or Amazon Web Services Regions at the same time in different contexts, as follows:

  • If you open QuickSight using the http://quicksight.aws.amazon.com URL, QuickSight automatically selects your account and Amazon Web Services Region. You can't view your Amazon Web Services account from QuickSight. We recommend using a different method to open QuickSight when you want to work with SPICE capacity.

  • If you open QuickSight from the Amazon Web Services Management Console, QuickSight opens in the account that you used to sign in to that console. However, it opens in the last Amazon Web Services Region that you selected in QuickSight. The Amazon Web Services Management Console and the QuickSight console each have an Amazon Web Services Region selector that works independently from the other. Changing the selected Amazon Web Services Region in the Amazon console doesn't change the Amazon Web Services Region in QuickSight.

  • If you use the Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) to run QuickSight commands, make sure to provide the relevant Amazon Web Services account for each QuickSight API operation you use. The Amazon Web Services Region isn't always required, and if you don't provide it, the Amazon CLI uses your default Amazon Web Services Region from your Amazon configuration. We recommend that you always explicitly provide the Amazon Web Services Region, to make sure you apply the command to the correct Amazon Web Services Region.

You must be signed in as a QuickSight administrator to view or manage SPICE capacity.