How to know when features are available in your region

Generally, release announcements contain a version number (or numbers) from which the features will be available. For example the latest announcement (https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=6495) is for versions >= 1.0.5494.

The announcement for "Amazon Redshift now runs VACUUM DELETE automatically" references the version 1.0.5290. https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/12/amazon-redshift-automatic-vacuum/

The announcement for "Added a DISTSTYLE AUTO distribution style as a default for newly created tables." (https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=6270) indicates that it is available from version 1.0.4789.

Please send me a private message with your cluster name and region if you find that these features are not yet available for you .

See "Viewing Distribution Styles" for info on checking whether the feature is in use on your tables. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/viewing-distribution-styles.html

You can check for automatically run vacuums with the following query:

SELECT q.userid
     , q.query
     , q.xid
     , TRIM( q.label )                                AS "label"
     , w.service_class                                AS queue
     , w.service_class_start_time                     AS start_time
     , w.service_class_end_time                       AS end_time
     , ROUND( total_exec_time::NUMERIC / 1000000,2 )  AS exec_secs
     , LEFT( TRIM( q.querytxt ),100 )                 AS querytxt
FROM stl_query      q
JOIN stl_wlm_query  w
     USING (userid,query)
WHERE w.service_class = 15
ORDER BY starttime DESC
LIMIT 25
;