Redis using as disk persistance with RDB and AOF file - redis

We are using redis server in production with 6 GB data size, Initially
we thought redis can be used as memory cache only, If it restarts then we can repopulate from the persistants data store with minimal downtime.
Now we realized that re-population of data from persistence store is not a good idea at all, It is causing major service downtime.
We want to evaluate redis persistant option by using RDB and AOF combination.We tried taking RDB snapshot once in a hour and committing to the AOF file with one second interval in test environments. AOF file is growing too big in test environment only. We tried to analyze the AOF file content and noticed that lot of keys we don't want to persist to the disk, We need them only in redis memory.
Is there any way to stop logging certain type of keys (block list keys) while logging to the AOF file

Generally, Redis does not provide a way to exclude certain types of keys from persistency. If you need some keys to persist to disk and others not to, you should use two independent Redis instances - one for each type and configure their persistency settings approriately. Divide and conquer.
Note: it is possible, however, to control what gets persisted in AOF inside the context if a Lua script - see the "Selective replication of commands" section of EVAL's documentation. That said, besides the consistency risks, it would be too much of a hassle to use this approach for what you need imo.

Related

Does Redis have persistence capability for selected keys/data?

I am aware of Redis having persistence option of RDB and AOF which to me is more or less entire redis cache store back-up.
Do we have persistence capability only for selected keys ?
One solution is to have long TTL but that would still be lost in case of a power failure or crash.
My requirement is not to persist entire data from redis but selected keys.
Thanks,
Ashish
No - Redis' data persistence applies to the entire dataset that the server manages, meaning all keys in all numbered databases.
If you want to persist just a bunch of keys, provision a separate Redis database for these and configure its persistency (AOF and/or RDB) accordingly.

Redis data recovery from Append Only File?

If we enable the AppendFileOnly in the redis.conf file, every operation which changes the redis database is loggged in that file.
Now, Suppose Redis has used all the memory allocated to it in the "maxmemory" direcive in the redis.conf file.
To store more data., it starts removing data by any one of the behaviours(volatile-lru, allkeys-lru etc.) specified in the redis.conf file.
Suppose some data gets removed from the main memory, But its log will still be there in the AppendOnlyFile(correct me if I am wrong). Can we get that data back using this AppendOnlyFile ?
Simply, I want to ask that if there is any way we can get that removed data back in the main memory ? Like Can we store that data into disk memory and load that data in the main memory when required.
I got this answer from google groups. I'm sharing it.
----->
Eviction of keys is recorded in the AOF as explicit DEL commands, so when
the file is replayed fully consistency is maintained.
The AOF is used only to recover the dataset after a restart, and is not
used by Redis for serving data. If the key still exists in it (with a
subsequent eviction DEL), the only way to "recover" it is by manually
editing the AOF to remove the respective deletion and restarting the
server.
-----> Another answer for this
The AOF, as its name suggests, is a file that's appended to. It's not a database that Redis searches through and deletes the creation record when a deletion record is encountered. In my opinion, that would be too much work for too little gain.
As mentioned previously, a configuration that re-writes the AOF (see the BGREWRITEAOF command as one example) will erase any keys from the AOF that had been deleted, and now you can't recover those keys from the AOF file. The AOF is not the best medium for recovering deleted keys. It's intended as a way to recover the database as it existed before a crash - without any deleted keys.
If you want to be able to recover data after it was deleted, you need a different kind of backup. More likely a snapshot (RDB) file that's been archived with the date/time that it was saved. If you learn that you need to recover data, select the snapshot file from a time you know the key existed, load it into a separate Redis instance, and retrieve the key with RESTORE or GET or similar commands. As has been mentioned, it's possible to parse the RDB or AOF file contents to extract data from them without loading the file into a running Redis instance. The downside to this approach is that such tools are separate from the Redis code and may not always understand changes to the data format of the files the way the Redis server does. You decide which approach will work with the level of speed and reliability you want.
But its log will still be there in the AppendOnlyFile(correct me if I am wrong). Can we get that data back using this AppendOnlyFile ?
NO, you CANNOT get the data back. When Redis evicts a key, it also appends a delete command to AOF. After rewriting the AOF, anything about the evicted key will be removed.
if there is any way we can get that removed data back in the main memory ? Like Can we store that data into disk memory and load that data in the main memory when required.
NO, you CANNOT do that. You have to take another durable data store (e.g. Mysql, Mongodb) for saving data to disk, and use Redis as cache.

How can I dump a single Redis DB index?

Redis SAVE and BGSAVE commands dump the complete Redis data to a persistent file.
But is there a way to dump only one DB index?
I am using the same Redis server with multiple DB indices.
I use DB 0 as config which is edited manually and contains just a small number of keys. I wish to dump this to a file as a config snapshot (versioned) to keep track of manual changes in the prod environment.
The rest of the DBs have a large number of items, that will take too long to dump, and I don't need to back them up.
Redis' persistence scope is the entire instance, meaning all shared/numbered databases and all keys in them. Saving only a subset of these is not supported.
Instead, use two independent Redis instances and configure each to persist (or not) per your needs. The overhead of running an insurance is a few megabytes so it is practically negligible.

What if Redis keys are never deleted programmatically?

What will happen to my redis data if no expiry is set and no DEL command is used.
Will it be removed after some default time ?
One more,
How redis stores data, is it in any file format ? because I can access data even after restarting the computer. So which files are created by redis and where ?
Thanks.
Redis is a in-memory data store meaning all your data is kept in RAM (ie. volatile). So theoritically your data will live as long as you don't turn the power off.
However, it also provides persistence in two modes:
RDB mode which takes snapshots of your dataset and saves them to the disk in a file called dump.drb. This is the default mode.
AOF mode which records every write operation executed by the server in an Append-Only file and then replays it thus reconstructing the original data.
Redis persistence is very good explained here and here by the creator of Redis himself.

Is Redis a memory only store like memcached or does it write the data to the disk

Is Redis memory only store like memcached or does it write the data to the disk? If it does write to the disk, how often is the disk written to?
Redis persistence is described in detail here:
http://redis.io/topics/persistence
By default, redis performs snapshotting:
By default Redis saves snapshots of the dataset on disk, in a binary file called dump.rdb. You can configure Redis to have it save the dataset every N seconds if there are at least M changes in the dataset, or you can manually call the SAVE or BGSAVE commands.
For example, this configuration will make Redis automatically dump the dataset to disk every 60 seconds if at least 1000 keys changed: save 60 1000
Another good reference is this link to the author's blog where he tries to explain how redis persistance works:
http://antirez.com/post/redis-persistence-demystified.html
Redis holds all data in memory. If the size of an application's data is too large for that, then Redis is not an appropriate solution.
However, Redis also offers two ways to make the data persistent:
1) Snapshots at predefined intervals, which may also depend on the number of changes. Any changes between these intervals will be lost at a power failure or crash.
2) Writing a kind of change log at every data change. You can fine-tune how often this is physically written to the disk, but if you chose to always write immediately (which will cost you some performance), then there will be no data loss caused by the in-memory nature of Redis.