Why Is Redis a Distributed Swiss Army Knife ðŸ’
#50: Break Into Redis Use Cases (5 Minutes)
Get the powerful template to approach system design for FREE on newsletter sign-up:
Note: This isn’t a sponsored post. I wrote it for someone who has never used Redis. You will find references at the bottom of this page if you want to go deeper.
Share this post & I'll send you some rewards for the referrals.
Why it matters: Redis is often used to build high-performance apps and solve various problems without reinventing the wheel.
Between the lines: Redis changed their licensing recently. Yet there are many forks 1.
It’s hackathon day at a tech company named Hooli.
And 2 software engineers want to create a fancy little app.
Yet they were experienced only with a few tools - including Redis.
So they decide to reuse their skills in every possible way and build a prototype.
Redis Use Cases
Here’s how they built the app:
1. Caching:
They installed a web server to handle API requests.
Yet most likely the same data will often get queried from the database. So they set up a Redis cache in front of the database.
A cache is a fast, in-memory data store.
How it works:
The database response is cached in the Redis hash data structure
The database query gets hashed and is stored as the cache key
The cache gets queried on every request to check if the data is present
Data is in cache: response gets served by the cache - cache hit
Data isn’t in the cache: query hits the database and then fills the cache - cache miss
It offers:
Faster response - 100x
Reduced database load
2. Queueing:
They added extra servers to query and process data - named query workers.
Yet some queries took longer to finish.
So they set up Redis streams to queue requests. It allowed them to process requests asynchronously.
A Redis stream is a data structure that acts like an append-only log. This means every entry is immutable.
How it works:
The request gets forwarded on a cache miss
The request gets wrapped in a message and gets assigned a unique identifier
The message gets added to the queue
The query worker consumes the message if it has free capacity
The query worker interacts with the database
It let them:
Buffer requests for asynchronous processing
Decouple serving and processing of requests
Auto-scale query workers based on load
3. Locking:
Many expensive queries at once will overload the database.
So they installed a distributed lock using Redis.
A distributed lock orchestrates access to a shared resource from many clients.
How it works:
The query worker acquires a lock before talking to the database
An expiry time is set for the lock
The number of query workers that access the database at once is limited. While others must wait
It offers:
Resilience by avoiding many queries at once
Avoid noisy neighbor problem
4. Throttling:
There’s a risk of lock acquisition failure. It will overload the database.
So they use Redis streams to throttle messages.
How it works:
The query worker fails to acquire a lock, so the message gets added back to the queue
Also a delay gets assigned to the message before inserting it
And an extra delay gets added each time the same message is re-inserted into the queue - exponential backoff
It provides:
Congestion management by controlling the number of parallel database requests
5. Session Store:
The web server stores the user’s data and preferences.
Yet it’s hard to scale a stateful web server.
So they installed a separate session store using Redis.
How it works:
Session data is stored in the Redis hash data structure
An expiry time is set for each user's data
The expiry time gets renewed whenever the user requests something
It let them:
Scale stateless web servers easily
Handle traffic spikes
6. Rate Limiting:
Many API requests in a short period will overload the web server.
So they set up a rate limiter with Redis.
How it works:
A counter is implemented using the Redis hash data structure
The counter represents the number of requests allowed on each API endpoint in a period
The counter gets decremented with each request
Requests get rejected if the counter becomes 0
The counter gets reset to its initial value after a specific period
While they deployed their app into production - it worked like a charm.
🔥 Bonus
Here are some more Redis use cases:
Sorted sets can be used to create a leaderboard
HyperLogLog can be used to estimate the number of items in a set
Pub-Sub can be used to implement real-time messaging
The geospatial index can be used to find nearby points within a radius
Time series data type can be used for data analytics
The list data type can be used to create a social network timeline
The RedisSearch module supports full-text search and SQL-like query functionality. It’s useful if the search index fits in memory or changes often
The RedisJSON module can be used to store nested JSON data. It avoids de-serialization costs
The bottom line: Redis is more than just a cache. It runs in memory, thus providing faster reads and writes.
Also it can survive a crash with disk persistence.
Besides it supports atomic operations using transactions.
It’s single-threaded, so there is no need for locks. Thus offering high performance.
👋 PS - Are you unhappy at your current job?
And preparing for system design interviews to get your dream job can be stressful.
Don't worry, I'm working on content to help you pass the system design interview. I'll make it easier - you spend only a few minutes each week to go from 0 to 1. Yet paid subscription fees will be higher than current pledge fees.
So pledge now to get access at a lower price.
"This newsletter is an amazing resource to learn system design." Alex
Subscribe to get simplified case studies delivered straight to your inbox:
Thank you for supporting this newsletter. Consider sharing this post with your friends and get rewards. Y’all are the best.
For the "2. Queueing" use case, when there is a cache miss, since the processing of the request is decoupled, does queue worker simply update the cache after it gets data back from the db? What does user get in return when there is a cache miss ?
This is great - out of curiosity what app do you use to make your charts?