redis: delete oldest keys when memory limited - redis

I have keys I want to keep indefinitely in redis provided I have enough memory. However, if redis runs low on memory, then I'd like it to remove the oldest keys first. I looked at the "eviction policy" options and it appears redis doesn't support this out of the box. https://support.redislabs.com/hc/en-us/articles/203290657-What-eviction-policies-do-you-support-
How could I implement this myself using commands available as part of the redis-client api?
Here's some pseudocode that might work to give a flavor for what I need:
1. Get the first N keys from a list sorted by key date asc.
2. Delete the oldest keys.
3. Repeat until memory is no longer constrained.

The eviction policy determines what happens when a database reaches its memory limit. To make room for new data, older data is evicted (removed) according to the selected policy.
You can select the policies from the reference link below based on your requirement. The one I am using in the example below is "allkeys-lru"
reference link
Example -
127.0.0.1:6379> CONFIG SET maxmemory-policy allkeys-lru
OK
Example in Python -
import redis
client = redis.Redis(host='localhost', port=6379, db=0)
client.config_set('maxmemory-policy', "allkeys-lru")

Related

Redis - prioritizing two sets of keys (eviction policy)

We have two separate set of keys in one Redis instance (set1 and set2). All keys in both sets have an expire time set.
If Redis instance hits max memory cap, we want keys from set1 (and only from it!) be evicted to free some memory, but we need to have a guarantee that keys from set2 will not be evicted until their time limit and, thus, will always expire in a normal way.
Is there any possibility to achieve it?
Thanx in advance!
Redis doesn't provide this finely grained of a level of control over cache invalidation. You're restricted to the following options:
noeviction: New values aren’t saved when memory limit is reached. When a database uses replication, this applies to the primary database
allkeys-lru: Keeps most recently used keys; removes least recently used (LRU) keys
allkeys-lfu: Keeps frequently used keys; removes least frequently used (LFU) keys
volatile-lru: Removes least recently used keys with the expire field set to true.
volatile-lfu: Removes least frequently used keys with the expire field set to true.
allkeys-random: Randomly removes keys to make space for the new data added.
volatile-random: Randomly removes keys with expire field set to true.
volatile-ttl: Removes keys with expire field set to true and the shortest remaining time-to-live (TTL) value.
The best you could do would be to set the policy to noeviction and then write your own cache-invalidation process. Or maybe set it to volatile-ttl and then have set2 be non-volatile keys that you remove manually. A fair bit of work and possibly not worth it.
The documentation describing these options also provides some good insight into how Redis actually removes things and might be worth perusing.

Efficiently delete RedisKeys in bulk via wildcard pattern

Problem:
I need to efficiently delete keys from my Redis Cache using a wildcard pattern. I don't need atomicity; eventual consistency is acceptable.
Tech stack:
.NET 6 (async all the way through)
StackExchange.Redis 2.6.66
Redis Server 6.2.6
I currently have ~500k keys in Redis.
I'm not able to use RedisJSON for various reasons
Example:
I store the following 3 STRING types with keys:
dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:sw:user:123
dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:fl:user:123
dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:sw:user:456
...
where each STRING stores JSON like so:
> dump dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:fl:user:123
"{\"Name\":\"john\",\"Age\":22}"
The original solution used the KeysAsync method to retrieve the list of keys to delete via a wildcard pattern. Since the Redis Server is 6.x, the SCAN feature is being used by KeysAsync internally by the StackExchange.Redis nuget.
Original implementation used a wildcard pattern dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:*. As one would expect, this solution didn't scale well and we started seeing RedisTimeoutExceptions.
I'm aware of the "avoid this in PROD if you can" and have seen Marc Gravell respond to a couple other questions/issues on SO and StackExchange.Redis GitHub. The only potential alternative I could think of is to use a Redis SET to "track" each RedisKey and then retrieve the list of values from the SET (which are the keys I need to remove). Then delete the SET as well as the returned keys.
Potential Solution?:
Create a Redis SET with a key of dailynote:getitemsforuser with a value which is the key of the form dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:XX...
The SET would look like:
dailynote:getitemsforuser (KEY)
dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:sw:user:123 (VALUE)
dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:fl:user:123 (VALUE)
dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:sw:user:456 (VALUE)
...
I would still have each individual STRING type as well:
dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:sw:user:123
dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:fl:user:123
dailynote:getitemsforuser:region:sw:user:456
...
when it is time to do the "wildcard" remove, I get the members of the dailynote:getitemsforuser SET, then call RemoveAsync passing the members of the set as the RedisKey[]. Then call RemoveAsync with the key of the SET (dailynote:getitemsforuser)
I'm looking for feedback on how viable of a solution this is, alternative ideas, gotchas, and suggestions for improvement. TIA
UPDATE
Added my solution I went with below...
The big problem with both KEYS and SCAN with Redis is that they require a complete scan of the massive hash table that stores every Redis key. Even if you use a pattern, it still needs to check each entry in that hash table to see if it matches.
Assuming you are calling SADD when you are also setting the value in your key—and thus avoiding the call to SCAN—this should work. It is worth noting that calls to SMEMBERS to get all the members of a Set can also cause issues if the Set is big. Redis—being single-threaded—will block while all the members are returned. You can mitigate this by using SSCAN instead. StackExchange.Redis might do this already. I'm not sure.
You might also be able to write a Lua script that reads the Set and UNLINKs all the keys atomically. This would reduce network but could tie Redis up if this takes too long.
I ended up using the solution I suggested above where I use a Redis SET with a known/fixed key to "track" each of the necessary keys.
When a key that needs to be tracked is added, I call StackExchange.Redis.IDatabase.SetAddAsync (SADD) while calling StackExchange.Redis.IDatabase.HashSetAsync (HSET) for adding the "tracked" key (along with its TTL).
When it is time to remove the "tracked" key, I first call StackExchange.Redis.IDatabase.SetScanAsync (SSCAN) (with a page size of 250) iterating on the IAsyncEnumerable and call StackExchange.Redis.IDatabase.KeyDeleteAsync (HDEL) on chunks of the members of the SET. I then call StackExchange.Redis.IDatabase.KeyDeleteAsync on the actual key of the SET itself.
Hope this helps someone else.

Need to know basic knowledge on redis

I'm new to redis, have doubt on below commands
In redis-cli i have entered info keyspace, for this i got the following output
# Keyspace
db0:keys=2,expires=0,avg_ttl=0
What does the above lines represent. N how to get the value from key.
You might want to look at https://redis.io/commands/INFO
To be specific the keyspace is, as mention in the official doc:
Database related statistics
The keyspace section provides statistics on the main dictionary of each database. The statistics are the number of keys, and the number of keys with an expiration.
For each database, the following line is added:
dbXXX: keys=XXX,expires=XXX
So in your case you have 2 keys present in redis

Redis - Loss of old data

We are using redis for storing cart data. We see that some of the carts that are older than a month aren't available any longer. I assume the data would have been persisted and should be available any time. Are there any settings that I must review to check why some of the old data is getting deleted? There is no TTL set when storing the data.
Maybe It reaches your redis maxmemory, take a look at the two config in redis.conf which maxmemory and maxmemory-policy
When the maxmemory is reached, the redis follows the action specified by maxmemory-policy which could be allkeys-lru or noeviction. if the policy is lru, the older data will be dropped.
as the redis docs said:
noeviction: return errors when the memory limit was reached and the client is trying to execute commands that could result in more memory to be used (most write commands, but DEL and a few more exceptions).
allkeys-lru: evict keys by trying to remove the less recently used (LRU) keys first, in order to make space for the new data added.

Redis expire on large set of keys

My problem is: i have a set of values that each of them has to have an expire value.
code:
set a:11111:22222 someValue
expire a:11111:22222 604800 \\usually equal a week
In a perfect world i would have put all those values in a hash and give each of them it's appropriate expire value, but redis does not allow expire on a hash fields.
problem is that i also have a process that need to get all those keys about once an hour
keys a:*
this command is really expensive and according to redis documentation can cause performance issues. I have about 25000-30000 keys at each given moment.
Does someone knows how can i solve such a problem?
thumbs up it guarantee (-;
Roy
Let me propose an alternative solution.
Rather than asking Redis to scan all the keys, why not perform a background dump, and parse the dump to extract the keys? This way, there is zero impact on the Redis instance itself.
Parsing the dump file is not as scary as it sounds, because you can use the excellent redis-rdb-tools package:
https://github.com/sripathikrishnan/redis-rdb-tools
You can either convert the dump file into a json file, and then parse the json file, or use the Python API to extract the keys by yourself.
As you've already mentioned, using keys is not a good solution to get your keys:
Warning: consider KEYS as a command that should only be used in production environments with extreme care. It may ruin performance when it is executed against large databases. This command is intended for debugging and special operations, such as changing your keyspace layout. Don't use KEYS in your regular application code. If you're looking for a way to find keys in a subset of your keyspace, consider using sets.
Source: Redis docs for KEYS
As the docs are suggesting, you should build your own indices!
A common way of building an index is to use a sorted set. You can read more on how it's working on my question over here.
Building references to your a:* keys using a sorted set, will also allow you to only select the required keys in relation to a date or any other int value, in case you're filtering the results!
And yes: it would be awesome if hashes could expire. Sadly it looks like its not going to happen, but there are in fact creative alternatives to take care about it by yourself.
Why don't you use a sorted set.
Here is some data creation sequence.
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> setex a:11111:22222 604800 someValue
OK
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> zadd user:index 1385112435 a:11111:22222 // 1384507635 + 604800
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> setex a:11111:22223 604800 someValue2
OK
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> zadd user:index 1385113289 a:11111:22223 // 1384508489 + 604800
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> zrangebyscore user:index 1385112435 1385113289
1) "a:11111:22222"
2) "a:11111:22223"
This is no select performance issue.
but, It spends more memory and insert cost.