Scalingo for Redis® is the official Redis®* addon provided by Scalingo. Details on the available plans can be found here. This addon gives your app instant access to a Redis® database running in its own Docker container.

Adding Scalingo for Redis® to Your app

You can add the Scalingo for Redis® addon through the dashboard or through the command line interface. The capacity of your database is elastic, you will be able to upgrade it later.

Through the Dashboard

1. Go to your app on Scalingo Dashboard
2. Click on Addons tab
3. Select the addon you want to add
4. In the dialog select the database plan you need
5. Validate your choice

Through the Command-Line Interface

$ scalingo --app my-app addons-add redis redis-starter-1024

-----> Addon redis has been provisionned
       ID: my-app-3030
       Modified variables: [REDIS_URL SCALINGO_REDIS_URL]
       Message from addon provider: Database successfully created

This command will provision the application my-app with a redis-starter-1024 Scalingo for Redis® database plan.

To find out what other plans are available:

$ scalingo addons-plans redis

Scalingo for Redis® Cluster Setup

If using a Business plan for your Scalingo for Redis® addon, we setup a Redis® cluster. This cluster has the following configuration:

• multiple Redis® nodes in a private network: the amount of memory per node depends on the plan,
• a couple of HAProxy as entrypoint to the Redis® private network: one is the leader and the other is just here as a backup in case of failing leader.
• three Redis® sentinels to initiate the election of a new leader if the current leader fails.

Getting Your Connection URI

Once the addon is provisioned, 2 environment variables are added to your app: SCALINGO_REDIS_URL and REDIS_URL. REDIS_URL is an alias to SCALINGO_REDIS_URL for the convenience of some libraries such as the Ruby gem sidekiq, but using SCALINGO_REDIS_URL is preferred in most cases. To find out how to use it in your code please refer to Application environment.

In most cases, you can pass the variable directly to the client library you are using in your code. But sometimes the library requires a specific URI format, you’ll need to add a little bit of code to suit the library.

You can get environment variables from the dashboard or the command line interface.

From the Dashboard

1. Go to your app on Scalingo Dashboard
2. Click on Environment tab
3. SCALINGO_REDIS_URL is displayed

From the Command-Line Interface

$ scalingo --app my-app env | grep REDIS

REDIS_URL=$SCALINGO_REDIS_URL
SCALINGO_REDIS_URL=redis://my-app-3030:YANs3y07m5_KJC2MSDGebh8tx1lliFWh2Yb239zVqGQvbElWDjIN7QWspVH92Ul8@my-app-3030.redis.a.osc-fr1.scalingo-dbs.com:30996

Remote Access Your Database

If you need to access your database from other places than your app please follow the Access your database guide.

Force TLS Connections

If you want to enforce TLS connections to your database so that TLS is not only available, but mandatory:

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Select the Settings tab
3. In the Settings submenu, select Internet Access
4. Locate the Force TLS connections block
5. Click the Enable button

Once this option is activated, the database denies any non-TLS connection. Consequently, your application must be configured to use TLS when connecting to the database. Please note that while we strongly advise to use TLS, it remains an option, meaning that you can still access your database without it if needed.

Scalingo for Redis® Configuration

Number of Databases

Each Redis® instance can use 5 databases (numbered from 0, the default DB, to 4).

Idle Connections Timeout

Redis® configuration:

timeout 150

It means that if a connection has not been used during 150 seconds, it will be automatically closed by Redis®. This is done to avoid accumulating staled connections. You must ensure that your application code handles gracefully potential timeouts in Redis® connections.

Persistence Mode

Redis® does not write all the operations requested by users on disk instantly, the write operations are done asynchronously by following different rules. There are two persistence modes: snapshot and strong persistence. They both represent a different trade-off in terms of performance and reliability. As such, you must take great care in your Redis® persistence mode settings.

Snapshot Persistence aka RDB

The first, and default mode, is the snapshot mode (also called RDB). It provides a compromise between performance and persistence. Data are saved to disk periodically, according to a defined number of write operations, asynchronously:

• Save to disk every 15 minutes if at least 1 operation has been done
• Save to disk every 5 minutes if at least 10 operations have been done
• Save to disk every minute if at least 10,000 operations have been done

It means that in the scope of an incident, recent data are lost.

Managing it from the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Select the Settings tab
3. In the Settings submenu, select Configuration
4. Locate the RDB Persistence block
5. Click the Enable button

Strong Persistence aka AOF

The second mode provides Redis® with the highest level of persistence (also called AOF). Any command impacting the dataset will be saved synchronously in a file. In case of incident, Redis® replays the logged operations to reconstruct the database dataset.

The typical use case is when using Redis® as a key-value store. We can imagine the comments on a blog post page being stored in a Redis® list. Losing comments because of an unexpected Redis® restart is not acceptable and activating AOF mode sounds like a good idea.

Managing it from the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Select the Settings tab
3. In the Settings submenu, select Configuration
4. Locate the AOF Persistence block
5. Click the Enable button

Cache Mode

The last available configuration is related to how long data are stored in Redis®. When cache mode is activated and the memory is full, Redis® will automatically drop the less recently used data to free up memory for most recent data. Be cautious as any data can be deleted.

The typical use case is Scalingo’s homepage and blog. It uses Redis® as a cache for HTML fragments. In such case, we can afford using the oldest data stored in Redis®, and re-compute them if needed.

This feature uses two settings of Redis®:

• maxmemory: Amount of data Redis® accepts before dropping some of them. It is set at the value of the memory available of the database plan you have chosen.
• maxmemory-policy: Set at allkeys-lru, which means ‘Least Recently Used’ keys will be evicted first if the maxmemory amount is reached.

Managing it from the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Select the Settings tab
3. In the Settings submenu, select Configuration
4. Locate the Cache Mode block
5. Click the Enable button

Changing Plans

You can upgrade or downgrade your database plan whenever you need it. This operation happens instantly thanks to Docker containers and no manual input is required. When you change the plan, your database will be stopped then restarted on a new host with new parameters of the chosen plan. During the operation the connection is dropped between your app and the database. Finally, after the operation is successful, the related app will be restarted.

From the Dashboard

1. Go to your app on Scalingo Dashboard
2. Click on Addons tab
3. Select the addon you want to change
4. In the dialog select the plan you want to upgrade/downgrade to
5. Validate your choice

From the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Click the Settings tab
3. In General, select Change plan
4. Select the new plan
5. Click the Finish button
6. Validate by clicking the Confirm plan change button

From the Command-Line Interface

To upgrade or downgrade your addon the sub-command is the same: addons-upgrade.

$ scalingo --app my-app addons-upgrade ad-0f1ab3e1-e97d-4f33-9168-4956379731a4 redis-starter-2048

In this example, ad-0f1ab3e1-e97d-4f33-9168-4956379731a4 is the ID of the addon, and redis-starter-2048 is the plan we want to upgrade to.

To find out the addon ID:

$ scalingo --app my-app addons

+--------+-----------------------------------------+---------------------+
|  ADDON |                   ID                    |        PLAN         |
+--------+-----------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Redis  | ad-0f1ab3e1-e97d-4f33-9168-4956379731a4 | redis-business-256  |
+--------+-----------------------------------------+---------------------+

Database Dashboard

The Scalingo for Redis® dashboard is the central place for administrative tasks such as:

• Monitor database and system stats
• Upgrade the database engine version
• Activate database specific features
• Manage database users
• Manage backups

Database Upgrade

When the database vendor releases a new version of your database engine, we take some time to study it and test it thoroughly before making it available. Upgrading to this new version is still your choice. We don’t do it automatically.

Your database needs to be upgraded to the latest minor version before having access to the next major version. For instance, let’s imagine that your version is 2.3.x and you want to upgrade to 3.1.x. If there is a 2.5.x version available, you first need to upgrade your database to the 2.5.x version before upgrading to the 3.1.x version.

During the upgrade, a downtime can unfortunately happen, depending on the Plan you are using and the upgrade:

• Starter Plans: In all cases, we have to stop the node to upgrade it, causing an inevitable downtime.
• Business Plans: We are able to achieve zero-downtime upgrade of minor version. In the case of major version upgrade, we need to completely stop the nodes, hence causing an inevitable downtime. In both cases, once the operation is finished, the application is restarted.

Using the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Select the Settings tab
3. In the Settings submenu, select the General tab
4. Locate the Database Version block
5. If an upgrade is available, a button allows you to trigger the upgrade
6. Click the button to launch the upgrade process

Container Stats

Database Stats

Database Users

Scalingo does not leverage yet the ACL feature introduced in Redis® 6. Hence Scalingo Redis® databases have a single default user with a password generated by Scalingo. The list of ACL of this default user are:

user default on <password> ~* &* +@all

It is not possible to create another user on a Redis® database.

Backups

If your database is in a paid plan (i.e. it’s not “free plan”), we’ll automatically make periodic backups of your database on a daily basis, at around 1:00 AM Central European Time (CET or UTC+0100). The time of your daily backup is configurable via the web dashboard of your database or using the CLI. The scheduled date is not strongly enforced: it might get delayed depending on the load on our infrastructure.

Using the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Click the Backups tab
3. Locate the Backup schedule block
4. Click the Schedule button
5. Make sure to check the I want to enable scheduled backups checkbox
6. Pick an hour (timezone is UTC)
7. Validate by clicking the Update button

Using the Command Line

1. Make sure you have correctly setup the Scalingo command line tool
2. Configure the time of backup:
   • By setting an hour:

     scalingo --app my-app --addon [YOUR ADDON KIND] backups-config --schedule-at 3
     

     In this example, we ask the platform to create the backups at ~03:00. Note: The timezone used is the local timezone of the machine running the command.

   • By setting an hour and a timezone:

     scalingo --app my-app --addon [YOUR ADDON KIND] backups-config --schedule-at "4:00 UTC"
     

     In this example, we ask the platform to create the backup at ~04:00 UTC. The output should look like this:

     -----> Periodic backups will be done daily at 6:00 CET
     

Retention Policy for Daily Backups

We keep a limited amount of backups depending on your database plan. A daily backup is retained for the last 7 days. That means that 7 backups will exist, one for each of the last 7 days. A weekly backup means that only one backup is saved over a 7 days period. A monthly backup means that only 1 backup is saved over the course of a month.

Retention Policy for Manual Backups

You can also manually trigger a backup for your database at any time you want. The number of manual backups that you can retain is limited by your plan:

In case a database is removed from an application, the retention policy remains untouched: backups are not instantly deleted.

Creating a Manual Backup

Using the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Click the Backups tab
3. Locate the Backup Settings block
4. Click the Make Manual Backup button
5. Locate the Backups block
6. Click the Trigger manual backup button

Using the Command Line

1. Make sure you have correctly setup the Scalingo command line tool
2. Ask the platform to backup the database:

   scalingo --app my-app --addon [YOUR ADDON KIND] backups-create
   

   After a while, the output should look like this:

   -----> Backup successfully finished
   

Downloading a Backup

Using the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Click the Backups tab
3. Locate the Backups block
4. Locate the Periodic backup you are interested in
5. Click the corresponding Download button

Using the Command Line

1. Make sure you have correctly setup the Scalingo command line tool
2. Run the following command(s):
   • To download the latest backup available:

     scalingo --app my-app --addon redis backups-download
     

     The output should look like this:

     -----> Selected the most recent successful backup
     139.37 KiB / 139.37 KiB [----------------------------------] 100.00% ? p/s
     ===> 20231207000608_my_app_4553.tar.gz
     

     The backup is downloaded in your current working directory.

   • To download a specific backup:
     1. List the backups available for this database addon:

        scalingo --app my-app --addon redis backups
        

        The output should look like this:

        +--------------------------+--------------------------------+--------+--------+
        |            ID            |           CREATED AT           |  SIZE  | STATUS |
        +--------------------------+--------------------------------+--------+--------+
        | 65710b0a99c3cd23d455edee | Thu, 07 Dec 2023 01:00:10 CET  | 143 kB | done   |
        | 656fb98b99c3cd23d455d4e7 | Wed, 06 Dec 2023 01:00:11 CET  | 143 kB | done   |
        | 656e680a99c3cd23d455c1f0 | Tue, 05 Dec 2023 01:00:10 CET  | 143 kB | done   |
        ...
        

     2. Locate the ID of the backup you want to download
     3. Download the backup:

        scalingo --app my-app --addon redis backups-download --backup <backup_ID>
        

        The output should look like this:

        79.10 KiB / 79.10 KiB [---------------------------------] 100.00% ? p/s
        ===> 20230305000044_my_app_4553.tar.gz
        

        The backup is downloaded in your current working directory.

*Redis® is a registered trademark of Redis® Ltd. Any rights therein are reserved to Redis® Ltd. Any use by Scalingo is for referential purposes only and does not indicate any sponsorship, endorsement or affiliation between Redis® and Scalingo.