Meeting developer needs with powerful new features in Azure Cache for Redis

We announced a groundbreaking partnership with Redis Labs to bring their Redis Enterprise software to Azure as a part of Azure Cache for Redis. We were humbled by the level of excitement and interest we received. We are announcing that you can now use Redis to tackle new challenges while making your caches larger and more resilient than ever before.

There has never been a more critical time for a technology like Redis. With billions of people working from home globally, web-based applications must be more responsive than ever, and enterprises both large and small need to be able to scale rapidly to meet unexpected demand. Solutions like Redis empower developers to optimize their data architectures and solve these problems. We’ve seen tremendous adoption of Azure Cache for Redis, our managed solution built on Open Source Redis, as Azure customers have used Redis as a distributed cache, session store, and message broker. We’re excited to incorporate Redis Enterprise technology and make this solution even more powerful and available while also unlocking important new use cases for developers like search, deduplication, and time series analysis.

What is Redis Enterprise on Azure?

Microsoft and Redis Labs have partnered closely to create the first native integration between Redis Labs technology and a major cloud platform. The result is a solution jointly engineered by Microsoft and Redis Labs with operations handled by Microsoft. Support is streamlined, with Microsoft handling the first call and pulling in dedicated Redis Labs expertise as needed. The solution consists of two new tiers—Enterprise and Enterprise Flash—and adds many features now in preview that are useful to enterprise customers such as:

◉ Zone redundant replication, with improved availability of 99.99 percent.

◉ Redis on Flash, enabling ten times larger cache sizes on NVMe flash storage.

◉ Redis Enterprise Modules, including:

   ◉ RediSearch

   ◉ RedisBloom

   ◉ RedisTimeSeries

◉ The latest version of Open Source Redis 6.0.

◉ Private link network isolation and transport layer security (TLS) encrypted connectivity.

As a native offering, this solution offers unique benefits beyond running Redis Enterprise as a marketplace offering, including:

◉ Access to set-up and configuration through the Azure Portal.

◉ Seamless integration into your favorite Azure security and monitoring tools.

◉ Integrated billing and the ability to use Azure spend commitment.

Furthermore, the product is backed all day, every day by the Microsoft support team, with a direct line to the experts at Redis Labs for additional support on Enterprise features.

When to use Redis Enterprise on Azure

While the current three tiers of Azure Cache for Redis provide advanced and highly scalable capabilities for all types of customers, the new offering brings even more capabilities to enterprise customers. Three of the key scenarios for you to consider are:

1. New use cases

Azure Cache for Redis has always been a great option for developers looking for a lightweight implementation of a distributed cache, session store, or message broker. With the addition of Redis Modules, there are several useful new ways to use Redis. The new modules supported are:

◉ RediSearch—a real-time secondary index with a full-text search engine that runs on top of your data in Redis. This module enables you to build extremely fast search functionality into your application while supporting advanced functionalities like full-text indexing and auto-complete.

◉ RedisBloom—adds a series of probabilistic data structures such as TopK and Count-Min Sketch, Bloom, and Cuckoo filters. These probabilistic data structures allow you to trade minimal accuracy for a significant reduction of memory and increase of performance.

◉ RedisTimeSeries—adds a time series data structure to ingest and query millions of samples in real-time. It also includes a toolbox specifically for time-series with features such as downsampling, configurable retention periods, and aggregated queries. Key use-cases include IoT, streaming, and application monitoring.

2. Using Redis at enterprise scale

With the Enterprise Flash option, extend DRAM capacity with NVMe flash storage and persistent memory to store significantly more data in a cost-effective manner. As a result, you’re now able to create caches that are ten times larger—up to 13 TB—limiting the need to split data on multiple caches. This configuration also significantly reduces your cost on a per GB basis.

3. The highest resiliency

Azure Cache for Redis already offers 99.9 percent availability. The new offering expands on this through support for zone redundant replica nodes, creating cache copies in separate availability zones that can be failed over to in case of an outage. Seamless zone-failover allows you to increase availability up to 99.99 percent—an essential update for enterprises that can’t afford downtime.

Source: microsoft.com