Amazon has released Amazon MemoryDB for Redis, a new Redis-compatible, durable, in-memory database. Amazon says MemoryDB makes it easy and cost-effective to build applications that require microsecond read and single-digit millisecond write performance with data durability and high availability.

Redis is popular for applications such as microservices where database performance is critical to success. Developers use Redis for an in-memory cache in front of a durable database.

Until now, developers wanting to put such a structure in place on AWS had to use Amazon ElastiCache for Redis, a fully managed in-memory caching service in front of database services such as Amazon Aurora or Amazon DynamoDB. This service was a major source of complaints from the developers of Redis as AWS ElastiCache is a rebranded version of Redis, and was one of the drivers behind Redis Labs changing their open source license.

Using ElastiCache in this way is problematic because it relies on custom code in users applications to keep the cache in sync with the database, and also means paying for running both a cache and a database.

Amazon MemoryDB for Redis aims to overcome these drawbacks. It replaces the low-latency cache and acts as the single, primary database. All the data is stored in memory, so latency is low and data throughput is high. MemoryDB uses a distributed transactional log that stores data across multiple Amazon Availability Zones (AZs). This ensures fast failover and database recovery, and node restarts with high durability.

MemoryDB is Redis compatible and supports the Redis set of data types, parameters, and commands, so all the code, applications, drivers, and tools used with Redis can be used with MemoryDB. MemoryDB is compatible with Redis 6.2 and will support newer versions as they are released in open source.

Amazon says that compared to ElastiCache, MemoryDB's advantage is that it can safely be the primary database for your applications because it provides data durability and microsecond read and single-digit millisecond write latencies, so you don’t need to add a cache in front of the database to achieve low latency. However, ElastiCache provides microsecond latencies for both reads and writes, so is still recommended for caching workloads where you want to accelerate data access from your existing databases.

While MemoryDB for Redis fills a gap in Amazon's cloud database provision, there are alternatives, including Redis Enterprise Cloud, Microsoft Azure Cache for Redis, and Google Memorystore for Redis.

Amazon MemoryDB For Redis is available now.

More Information

Amazon MemoryDB for Redis

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