Share your experience using Redis

We use the solution as a caching layer.

The ability to fetch and save data quickly is valuable. We can fetch data within milliseconds. The tool provides data structure capabilities. It also provides geolocation search and JSON search capabilities. The performance is very good. Redis can save each internal transaction to the file system. It helps us handle persistence in our storage.

The product's main purpose is caching, even though the vendor says we can also use it as a persistent database. If we use a lot of data, it will eventually cost us a lot. The tool is single-threaded. It doesn't support many data models. We only have key-value, hash, and JSON.

I have been using the solution for more than ten years.

The tool is stable.

The tool is easy to scale. We can add additional storage, and it will scale easily. We have millions of end users. We are an enterprise-level organization.

The product provides excellent support.

Positive

The deployment is easy. The deployment takes a couple of hours. One engineer can deploy the tool. We can fully manage the tool as SaaS with low maintenance. If we want to deploy it in our own environment, we must be more aware of changes and monitoring. Since I'm using the caching layer, we must choose the correct mode to save and fetch the data optimally. It is complicated to understand which feature or model we must use.

Eventually, we need to manage caching. If we manage on our own, it will take a lot of developer resources, infrastructure, and environmental resources. So, it is better to use Redis. The ROI is better.

We pay a yearly fee, but we pay according to the usage.

I also work with PostgreSQL, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Cassandra, and Splunk. Redis provides efficient caching and performance. The other solutions have persistent storage functionality. If I want persistence, I would use the other tools. If I need high performance, I would use Redis.

We must understand our system needs and pick the correct data structure in Redis to support it most efficiently. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use it primarily for real-time applications. In our web application, we added a feature where hundreds of people could play a quiz in real time. 

Instead of using traditional databases like SQL, we implemented Redis to make everything happen in real time – all those quick calculations, data hashing for easy retrieval, and so on. 

It was a live quiz feature, so Redis helped a lot. I also use Redis for caching and similar general use cases.

It improved the performance. For example, data structures like hashmaps in Redis make it a very fast database – much faster than traditional SQL databases. It can perform at significantly higher speeds. Latencies are very low. Our primary focus wasn't on saving money but on improving performance for that specific feature.

So, performance has been the key improvement. Every calculation happened in real time. It improved the performance 10X. 

In our company, we have limited resources, so we can't manage the database ourselves. We use services from Azure for that.  So, Redis integrates well with those services.

We use Azure Cache for Redis.

It performs much better than traditional databases. Our calculations happen in real-time, which was crucial for that quiz feature.

The price could be better. 

I have been using it for more than two years. 

It has been a reliable product for us.

It's been working very well for us. Since our scale isn't huge, it's able to handle our needs without issues.

I've also worked with PostgreSQL, Cassandra, MySQL, and Elasticsearch.

It's tough to find a direct competitor because Redis, Cassandra, PostgreSQL, and Elasticsearch all serve different purposes. Cassandra excels when you structure tables according to your requirements upfront. It offers fast reads. However, the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) isn't as flexible as SQL – there are no joins, for example. It is a very restricted query language. So, we need to carefully design your database tables with future data needs in mind.

Redis is better tested and is used by large companies. I haven't found a direct alternative to what Redis offers. Plus, there are a lot of support and learning resources available, which help you use Redis efficiently.

It's actually quite expensive compared to SQL since Redis uses a system's main RAM, which is costly. And memory can be limited.

We opt for a dedicated server.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. It's been very stable so far and performs well within our system.

I would recommend it, but I would also highlight the cost factor as something to consider.