Amazon Timestream: Is there a cost associated with empty measure values?

Question

If I have multi-measure records where most of the measures are empty, does that still affect my storage cost as if they were populated?

Example: Will a multi-measure record of 250 empty values and 2 populated values take up storage cost for 252 values or 2 values?

Also, if I have single-measure records with different data types, does the unused measure value have a cost to it?

Example: "*measure_name='my_bigint', measure_value::double=NULL, measure_value::bigint=5000*", does the NULL take up 8 bytes of storage?

Rajesh Iyer - AWS · Accepted Answer

Since we do not support NULL values on ingest, if an ingested record does not include a measure either in a single measure or multi measure record, then it will not be charged for storage. The storage cost is associated with the measures, dimensions and values in the ingested record.

Chris_P · Answer

This page (https://aws.amazon.com/timestream/pricing/) explains how pricing works for Timestream and provides some examples of billing. Based on that doc, billing is based in part on amount stored in GB. I don't know for sure whether or not NULL takes up 8 bytes of storage. This page (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/timestream/latest/developerguide/metering-and-pricing.storage.html) shows how to calculate the size of each record. The doc says 8 bytes for values. It also shows that each dimension consumes a number of bytes to hold the dimension name. According to the Supported data types documentation, null data is contained in the 'unknown' data type. So NULL is a valid datatype. Based on all that, I going to assume storing 252 values, regardless of values, is going to require more memory in storage than 2 values due to the increased size of every record containing 252 dimensions.

Amazon Timestream: Is there a cost associated with empty measure values?

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