# Optimizing Redshift Write Patterns: Tackling Tombstones and Ghost Rows

DevFeed: [Optimizing Redshift Write Patterns: Tackling Tombstones and Ghost Rows](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/optimizing-redshift-write-patterns-tackling-tombstones-and-ghost-rows-20467.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://eng.wealthfront.com/2026/08/24/optimizing-redshift-write-patterns-tackling-tombstones-and-ghost-rows/>)

Author: Harichandan Pulagam

Published: 2026-08-24T20:18:12Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Wealthfront](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/wealthfront.md>)

Topics: [Amazon Redshift](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/amazon-redshift.md>), [dashboards](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/dashboards.md>), [Data Quality](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data-quality.md>)

Tags: [amazon-redshift](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/amazon-redshift.md>), [batch](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/batch.md>), [dashboards](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/dashboards.md>), [data-quality](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data-quality.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [load](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/load.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [redshift](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/redshift.md>), [space](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/space.md>), [wealthfront-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/wealthfront-engineering.md>)

## AI overview

This Wealthfront engineering post examines how Redshift tables grew to nearly 10 times the size of their useful data because deleted rows remained on disk as ghost rows. It describes the resulting read and write latency and the write strategies adopted to control table size.

## Source excerpt

Amazon Redshift is a core part of our analytics platform, powering dashboards, data quality checks, ad-hoc analytical workloads, and downstream reporting on a shared cluster. Because everything runs on the same cluster, the size and health of our tables directly affects every workload. At Wealthfront, data drives every decision we make, which means any performance... Read more