Amazon ElastiCache vs Redis

Overview

Amazon ElastiCache

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.0K

Votes151

Redis

Stacks61.9K

Followers46.5K

Votes3.9K

GitHub Stars42

Forks6

Amazon ElastiCache vs Redis: What are the differences?

Amazon ElastiCache and Redis are both widely used caching solutions in the field of cloud computing. Let's explore the key differences between the two:

Managed Service vs. Open-Source Technology: Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), taking care of maintenance, patching, and scaling for you. On the other hand, Redis is an open-source technology that requires self-management, including installation, updates, and server configuration.
Multi-AZ Availability: Amazon ElastiCache offers availability in multiple Availability Zones (AZs), providing built-in redundancy and ensuring high availability in case of a single AZ failure. Redis, on the other hand, does not provide built-in multi-AZ support. To achieve high availability, you need to implement your own clustering and replication mechanisms.
Data Persistence: Amazon ElastiCache allows you to choose between two storage options: Redis, which provides both in-memory and disk-based persistence, and Memcached, which only offers in-memory caching. In contrast, Redis as a standalone technology provides more advanced data persistence features, such as point-in-time snapshots and append-only files, ensuring durability even in case of service restarts or failures.
Data Model and Advanced Features: Redis supports a wide range of data types, including strings, lists, sets, sorted sets, and hashes. It also provides powerful commands and features such as transactions, pub/sub messaging, Lua scripting, and support for geospatial indexes. Amazon ElastiCache also supports these data types and features, making it suitable for applications that require the advanced capabilities of Redis.
Integration with AWS Ecosystem: Amazon ElastiCache seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, and Amazon CloudWatch, allowing you to leverage the full power of the AWS ecosystem. Redis, being an open-source technology, can also be integrated with AWS services, but it requires manual configuration and setup.
Pricing and Cost: Amazon ElastiCache pricing includes costs for infrastructure, maintenance, and support, which can add up depending on the size of your cache cluster. Redis, being an open-source technology, is free to use but requires you to manage the infrastructure yourself. This means that you need to consider the costs of server provisioning, maintenance, and scalability when using Redis in a self-managed environment.

In summary, Amazon ElastiCache provides a fully managed service with built-in multi-AZ support, while Redis offers more advanced data persistence features and a wider range of data types. ElastiCache integrates seamlessly with the AWS ecosystem, whereas Redis requires manual configuration.

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Detailed Comparison

Amazon ElastiCache	Redis
ElastiCache improves the performance of web applications by allowing you to retrieve information from fast, managed, in-memory caches, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. ElastiCache supports Memcached and Redis.	Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache, and message broker. Redis provides data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes, and streams.
Support for two engines: Memcached and Redis;Ease of management via the AWS Management Console. With a few clicks you can configure and launch instances for the engine you wish to use.;Compatibility with the specific engine protocol. This means most of the client libraries will work with the respective engines they were built for - no additional changes or tweaking required.;Detailed monitoring statistics for the engine nodes at no extra cost via Amazon CloudWatch;Pay only for the resources you consume based on node hours used	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 42
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 6
Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 61.9K
Followers 1.0K	Followers 46.5K
Votes 151	Votes 3.9K
Pros & Cons
Pros 58 Redis 32 High-performance 26 Backed by amazon 21 Memcached 14 Elastic	Pros 888 Performance 542 Super fast 514 Ease of use 444 In-memory cache 324 Advanced key-value cache Cons 15 Cannot query objects directly 3 No secondary indexes for non-numeric data types 1 No WAL

What are some alternatives to Amazon ElastiCache, Redis?

Hazelcast

With its various distributed data structures, distributed caching capabilities, elastic nature, memcache support, integration with Spring and Hibernate and more importantly with so many happy users, Hazelcast is feature-rich, enterprise-ready and developer-friendly in-memory data grid solution.

Aerospike

Aerospike is an open-source, modern database built from the ground up to push the limits of flash storage, processors and networks. It was designed to operate with predictable low latency at high throughput with uncompromising reliability – both high availability and ACID guarantees.

MemSQL

MemSQL converges transactions and analytics for sub-second data processing and reporting. Real-time businesses can build robust applications on a simple and scalable infrastructure that complements and extends existing data pipelines.

Apache Ignite

It is a memory-centric distributed database, caching, and processing platform for transactional, analytical, and streaming workloads delivering in-memory speeds at petabyte scale

MemCachier

MemCachier provides an easy and powerful managed caching solution for all your performance and scalability needs. It works with the ubiquitous memcache protocol so your favourite language and framework already supports it.

SAP HANA

It is an application that uses in-memory database technology that allows the processing of massive amounts of real-time data in a short time. The in-memory computing engine allows it to process data stored in RAM as opposed to reading it from a disk.

Memcached Cloud

Memcached Cloud is a fully-managed service for running your Memcached in a reliable and fail-safe manner. Your dataset is constantly replicated, so if a node fails, an auto-switchover mechanism guarantees data is served without interruption. Memcached Cloud provides various data persistence options as well as remote backups for disaster recovery purposes.

VoltDB

VoltDB is a fundamental redesign of the RDBMS that provides unparalleled performance and scalability on bare-metal, virtualized and cloud infrastructures. VoltDB is a modern in-memory architecture that supports both SQL + Java with data durability and fault tolerance.

Tarantool

It is designed to give you the flexibility, scalability, and performance that you want, as well as the reliability and manageability that you need in mission-critical applications

Azure Redis Cache

It perfectly complements Azure database services such as Cosmos DB. It provides a cost-effective solution to scale read and write throughput of your data tier. Store and share database query results, session states, static contents, and more using a common cache-aside pattern.

Related Comparisons

Amazon ElastiCache vs Redis: What are the differences?

Amazon ElastiCache and Redis are both widely used caching solutions in the field of cloud computing. Let's explore the key differences between the two:

Managed Service vs. Open-Source Technology: Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), taking care of maintenance, patching, and scaling for you. On the other hand, Redis is an open-source technology that requires self-management, including installation, updates, and server configuration.
Multi-AZ Availability: Amazon ElastiCache offers availability in multiple Availability Zones (AZs), providing built-in redundancy and ensuring high availability in case of a single AZ failure. Redis, on the other hand, does not provide built-in multi-AZ support. To achieve high availability, you need to implement your own clustering and replication mechanisms.
Data Persistence: Amazon ElastiCache allows you to choose between two storage options: Redis, which provides both in-memory and disk-based persistence, and Memcached, which only offers in-memory caching. In contrast, Redis as a standalone technology provides more advanced data persistence features, such as point-in-time snapshots and append-only files, ensuring durability even in case of service restarts or failures.
Data Model and Advanced Features: Redis supports a wide range of data types, including strings, lists, sets, sorted sets, and hashes. It also provides powerful commands and features such as transactions, pub/sub messaging, Lua scripting, and support for geospatial indexes. Amazon ElastiCache also supports these data types and features, making it suitable for applications that require the advanced capabilities of Redis.
Integration with AWS Ecosystem: Amazon ElastiCache seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, and Amazon CloudWatch, allowing you to leverage the full power of the AWS ecosystem. Redis, being an open-source technology, can also be integrated with AWS services, but it requires manual configuration and setup.
Pricing and Cost: Amazon ElastiCache pricing includes costs for infrastructure, maintenance, and support, which can add up depending on the size of your cache cluster. Redis, being an open-source technology, is free to use but requires you to manage the infrastructure yourself. This means that you need to consider the costs of server provisioning, maintenance, and scalability when using Redis in a self-managed environment.

Amazon ElastiCache vs Redis

Overview