Launch an Amazon Redshift Cluster with aws-sdk for ruby. Ref -> http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSRubySDK/latest/AWS/Redshift/Client.html

launch_redshift.rb

require 'aws-sdk'

ACCESS_KEY_ID=ENV['AWS_KEY_ID']
SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=ENV['AWS_SEC_KEY']

CLUSTER_IDENTIFIER='test-instance'
DB_NAME='testdb'
PORT_NUMBER=5439
MASTER_USERNAME='test_admin'
MASTER_USER_PASSWORD=ENV['MASTER_USER_PASSWORD']

# minimum(single node) cluster options
CLUSTER_OPTION={
  :db_name => DB_NAME,
  :cluster_identifier => CLUSTER_IDENTIFIER,
  :cluster_type => 'single-node',
  :node_type => 'dw.hs1.xlarge',
  :master_username => MASTER_USERNAME,
  :master_user_password => MASTER_USER_PASSWORD
}

# initialize
@redshift = AWS::Redshift.new(
  :access_key_id => ACCESS_KEY_ID,
  :secret_access_key => SECRET_ACCESS_KEY)

# check the number of clusters
response = @redshift.client.describe_clusters
response and response.clusters and response.clusters.each do |c| 
  if c.cluster_identifier == CLUSTER_IDENTIFIER
    puts "Already #{CLUSTER_IDENTIFIER} exists."
    exit 1
  end 
end

# create cluster
response = @redshift.client.create_cluster(CLUSTER_OPTION)
if response
  puts "Succeeded to launch a cluster. instance:#{CLUSTER_IDENTIFIER}"
  exit 0
else
  puts "Failed to launch a cluster. instance:#{CLUSTER_IDENTIFIER}"
  exit 2
end

thanks for the late night coding scramble gift. hopefully some of the redshift administration answers i've been posting in stackoverflow will pay you back.