Join us at RedisDays Atlanta

1.1 What is Redis?

  • Redis in Action – Home
  • Foreword
  • Preface
  • Part 1: Getting Started
  • Part 2: Core concepts
  • 1.3.1 Voting on articles
  • 1.3.2 Posting and fetching articles
  • 1.3.3 Grouping articles
  • 4.2.1 Configuring Redis for replication
  • 4.2.2 Redis replication startup process
  • 4.2.3 Master/slave chains
  • 4.2.4 Verifying disk writes
  • 5.1 Logging to Redis
  • 5.2 Counters and statistics
  • 5.3 IP-to-city and -country lookup
  • 5.4 Service discovery and configuration
  • 5.1.1 Recent logs
  • 5.1.2 Common logs
  • 5.2.2 Storing statistics in Redis
  • 5.3.1 Loading the location tables
  • 5.3.2 Looking up cities
  • 5.4.1 Using Redis to store configuration information
  • 5.4.2 One Redis server per application component
  • 5.4.3 Automatic Redis connection management
  • 8.1.1 User information
  • 8.1.2 Status messages
  • 9.1.1 The ziplist representation
  • 9.1.2 The intset encoding for SETs
  • Chapter 11: Scripting Redis with Lua
  • 11.1.1 Loading Lua scripts into Redis
  • 11.1.2 Creating a new status message
  • 11.2 Rewriting locks and semaphores with Lua
  • 11.3 Doing away with WATCH/MULTI/EXEC
  • 11.4 Sharding LISTs with Lua
  • 11.5 Summary
  • 11.2.1 Why locks in Lua?
  • 11.2.2 Rewriting our lock
  • 11.2.3 Counting semaphores in Lua
  • 11.4.1 Structuring a sharded LIST
  • 11.4.2 Pushing items onto the sharded LIST
  • 11.4.4 Performing blocking pops from the sharded LIST
  • A.1 Installation on Debian or Ubuntu Linux
  • A.2 Installing on OS X
  • B.1 Forums for help
  • B.4 Data visualization and recording
  • Buy the paperback
  • Redis in Action – Home
  • Foreword
  • Preface
  • Part 1: Getting Started
  • Part 2: Core concepts
  • 1.3.1 Voting on articles
  • 1.3.2 Posting and fetching articles
  • 1.3.3 Grouping articles
  • 4.2.1 Configuring Redis for replication
  • 4.2.2 Redis replication startup process
  • 4.2.3 Master/slave chains
  • 4.2.4 Verifying disk writes
  • 5.1 Logging to Redis
  • 5.2 Counters and statistics
  • 5.3 IP-to-city and -country lookup
  • 5.4 Service discovery and configuration
  • 5.1.1 Recent logs
  • 5.1.2 Common logs
  • 5.2.2 Storing statistics in Redis
  • 5.3.1 Loading the location tables
  • 5.3.2 Looking up cities
  • 5.4.1 Using Redis to store configuration information
  • 5.4.2 One Redis server per application component
  • 5.4.3 Automatic Redis connection management
  • 8.1.1 User information
  • 8.1.2 Status messages
  • 9.1.1 The ziplist representation
  • 9.1.2 The intset encoding for SETs
  • Chapter 11: Scripting Redis with Lua
  • 11.1.1 Loading Lua scripts into Redis
  • 11.1.2 Creating a new status message
  • 11.2 Rewriting locks and semaphores with Lua
  • 11.3 Doing away with WATCH/MULTI/EXEC
  • 11.4 Sharding LISTs with Lua
  • 11.5 Summary
  • 11.2.1 Why locks in Lua?
  • 11.2.2 Rewriting our lock
  • 11.2.3 Counting semaphores in Lua
  • 11.4.1 Structuring a sharded LIST
  • 11.4.2 Pushing items onto the sharded LIST
  • 11.4.4 Performing blocking pops from the sharded LIST
  • A.1 Installation on Debian or Ubuntu Linux
  • A.2 Installing on OS X
  • B.1 Forums for help
  • B.4 Data visualization and recording
  • Buy the paperback

    1.1 What is Redis?

    When I say that Redis is a database, I’m only telling a partial truth. Redis is a very fast non-relational database that stores a mapping of keys to five different types of values. Redis supports in-memory persistent storage on disk, replication to scale read performance, and client-side sharding1 to scale write performance. That was a mouthful, but I’ll break it down by parts.

    1 Sharding is a method by which you partition your data into different pieces. In this case, you partition your data based on IDs embedded in the keys, based on the hash of keys, or some combination of the two. Through partitioning your data, you can store and fetch the data from multiple machines, which can allow a linear scaling in performance for certain problem domains.