Azure Redis Cache, one of the cache services offered by Microsoft Azure, is Azure Redis Cache. It is based on Redis Cache, an open-source Redis cache. It allows users to enjoy the best of both the rich features and eco-system of Redis as well as reliable hosting and monitoring by Microsoft.
Redis is used by companies such as Twitter, GitHub and Stack Overflow. It is different than traditional caches in that it supports a variety data structures like strings. These data types can also be used for atomic operations such as appending a string, increasing value in a hash and pushing element to a table, or getting the number with highest rank in a set. It also supports transactions, pub/sub and Lua scripting. Keys with a limited life-time-to-live are similar to traditional caches.
The new management portal allows you to create an Azure Redis cache. This service is available in two levels:
Basic: This is suitable for development/test purposes, and other non-critical workloads. It only has one node, but it is available in multiple sizes.
Standard: This allows replication through primary and second nodes. It supports multiple sizes and has a 99.9% availability SLA.
The Azure Redis cache can store up to 53GB. Monthly pricing starts at $16 for the Basic Tier and $41 to the Standard Tier. Customers who use the Azure Managed Cache Service and In-Role Cache both can migrate to Azure Redis Cache easily.
Azure Redis Cache has many benefits:
Redis engine’s low latency and high throughput can provide high performance. As the application loads increase, the cache layer remains available. The cache layer is independent, so the data tier can be scaled separately.
Supports a variety programming languages, including C#, Java and PHP, VCL, Fancy. Io, Lua. Perl. Rust. Go, Scala. Matlab. Python.
Leverages Redis authentication and supports SSL to secure client/cache communication.
Redis cache is highly accessible by having a primary and secondary replica cache. If the primary cache is lost, the secondary replica can be promoted to primary and a new replica created. This is an automatic process that Microsoft Azure manages.
The Azure Management Portal makes it easy to monitor the health and performance and set up alerts when a threshold is crossed.
It is one of the most popular caching services on the market today, with so many features and support. Although 53 GB cache may seem like a limitation, it’s actually an opportunity to split the cache units. For example, user data can be moved to one cache unit while product data can be moved to another. The Azure Redis Cache is a service that allows users to store and manage Redis caches. Microsoft Azure takes care of this. All in all, Azure Redis cache is a positive.
In my next post, you will learn how to create an Azure Redis cache from the new management portal. Comment below with your questions and experiences with Azure Redis cache. Happy caching!