An overview of deploying Redis on Kubernetes along with an extra section explaining how to expose our Redis cluster as a Key Value store that is reachable from the internet. Source code and deployment files are available here: https://github.com/IdanAtias/redis-on-k8s

1. Redis on Kubernetes
Deployment Overview
https://github.com/IdanAtias/redis-on-k8s
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2. Proper Disclosure
● Parts of this guide are based on:
○ Kubernetes: up and running book
■ Great book for everyone interested in understanding Kubernetes concepts
○ Kubernetes official documentation
○ Redis official documentation
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3. Prerequisites
● Basic understanding of Kubernetes concepts
● Basic familiarity with Kubernetes objects
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4. Redis Intro | What is it?
● In-memory key-value store that can persist on disk
● Can be used as a:
○ Database
○ Cache
○ Message Broker (a.k.a Pub/Sub)
● Supports master-slave replication
● Written in ANSI C
● Open Source
● Used by: Twitter, Instagram, Uber, Airbnb and many more
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5. Redis Intro | Cluster Example
Master
R/W
Slave
R/O
Slave
R/O
Slave
R/O
- Master replicates
(async) to slaves
- Slaves are read-only
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6. Redis Intro | Node Zoom In
- Two main components
- Server serves reads and or writes
(depending on node type)
- Sentinel responsible to:
- Monitor the master and other
replicas in the cluster
- Notify (via API) when something
goes wrong
- Automatic F/O - when master is not
working as expected, it can start a
failover process
- Configuration provider - clients can
ask it for Master/Slave addresses
Server
Sentinel
Node
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7. Deploying Redis | Kubernetes Cluster Setup
● For this tutorial I chose to use GKE
○ Google offers one zonal-cluster for free
■ Single Master running in a single availability zone (no HA)
■ You pay only for the instances and the extra resources (e.g., LB)
■ Free tier credits are more than enough for our purpose
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8. Deploying Redis | Defining our Redis Cluster
● 3 Redis Nodes
○ 1 Master and 2 Slave replicas
● No data persistence
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Master
R/W
Slave
R/O
Slave
R/O

9. Deploying Redis | Strategy
● How a single Redis Pod will look like?
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Server Container
Sentinel Container
Pod

10. Deploying Redis | Strategy
● At first sight, it seems like ReplicaSet can fit our needs
○ Our Redis Pods are Identical
○ ReplicaSet will make sure we have just enough of them
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● However, ReplicaSet is not what we need
○ Our Redis Pods maybe identical in their structure but not in their role!
○ We need to define different behaviours for different Pods (master/slave)
● In conclusion, ReplicaSet is not optimal for stateful applications

11. Deploying Redis | Strategy
● StatefulSet is the k8s object for managing stateful applications
● It is similar to ReplicaSet but with unique properties:
○ Pods get a persistent hostname with a unique index (e.g., db-0, db-1)
○ Pods are created in increasing order (0, 1, 2, …, N); New Pod creation is blocked until the
previous Pod is healthy
○ Deletion of Pods is done in decreasing order (N, …, 2, 1, 0)
● It is suitable for deploying applications needing unique, persistent
identities and stable hostnames
● Therefor, we’ll use StatefulSets for our deployment
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12. Deploying Redis | Kubernetes Objects | Config Maps
● We need to define some init/configuration files to be used by the Redis
Pods
● We use k8s ConfigMap objects to inject these to the Pods
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13. Deploying Redis | Kubernetes Objects | Config Maps
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: redis-config
data:
master.conf: |
bind 0.0.0.0 # listen on every interface
port 6379 # accept connections on this port
dir /redis-data # work dir; db written to this dir
slave.conf: |
bind 0.0.0.0
port 6379
dir .
slaveof redis-0.redis 6379 # makes a Redis instance a copy of another Redis server
….
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14. Deploying Redis | Kubernetes Objects | Config Maps
….
sentinel.conf: |
bind 0.0.0.0
port 26379
sentinel monitor redis redis-0.redis 6379 2 # monitor a master called “redis”
sentinel parallel-syncs redis 1
sentinel down-after-milliseconds redis 10000
sentinel failover-timeout redis 20000
init.sh: |
#!/bin/bash
if [[ ${HOSTNAME} == 'redis-0' ]]; then
redis-server /redis-config/master.conf
else
redis-server /redis-config/slave.conf
fi
….
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15. Deploying Redis | Kubernetes Objects | Config Maps
….
sentinel.sh: |
#!/bin/bash
# sentinel.conf is used by the system for saving current state and it is reloaded in case of restarts
# sentinel won't start if no conf file is given or if the conf file path is not writable
# so we start by copying conf file from r/o configmap volume to regular (emptydir vol)
cp /redis-config-read-only/*.* /redis-config
while ! ping -c 1 redis-0.redis; do # wait for DNS name to be available
echo 'Waiting for server'
sleep 1
done
redis-sentinel /redis-config/sentinel.conf
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16. Deploying Redis | Kubernetes Objects | Service
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: redis
spec:
ports:
- port: 6379
name: peer
clusterIP: None # creates a headless service
selector:
app: redis
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● Headless service allows clients to discover pod IPs through DNS lookups
● Usually, when a DNS lookup is done for a service, we get a single IP — the service’s
cluster IP
● When a service is headless (i.e. clusterIp is None) we get the IPs for all the pods in
the service
● This enables clients to connect to a specific pod

17. Deploying Redis | Kubernetes Objects | StatefulSet
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
name: redis
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: redis
replicas: 3
serviceName: "redis" # determines the domain name for our redis cluster
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: redis
spec:
….
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18. Deploying Redis | Kubernetes Objects | StatefulSet
….
spec:
volumes:
- configMap:
name: redis-config
name: config
- emptyDir: {} # keep app data that can survive container restarts
name: data
….
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19. Deploying Redis | Kubernetes Objects | StatefulSet
….
containers:
- command: [sh, -c, source /redis-config/init.sh ]
image: redis:4.0.11-alpine
name: redis
ports:
- containerPort: 6379
name: redis
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /redis-config
name: config
- mountPath: /redis-data
name: data
- command: [sh, -c, source /redis-config-read-only/sentinel.sh]
image: redis:4.0.11-alpine
name: sentinel
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /redis-config-read-only
name: config
- mountPath: /redis-config
name: data 19

20. Exposing Our Cluster
● What if we wanted use our Redis cluster as a simple K/V store that is
reachable via the internet?
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● First, we may want to abstract the internals of Redis by deploying a simple
FE that will manage the operations against the Redis cluster (BE)
● Second, we need to make this FE reachable from the internet

21. Exposing Our Cluster | Strategy
● Kubernetes offers a few ways to expose services outside of the cluster:
○ NodePort
■ Assign a port for the Redis FE service
■ When clients connect to this port on each of the cluster nodes they will be directed
to the service
■ Pros
● Simple
■ Cons
● Cluster nodes should have an external IP
● Harder to maintain in great scales
● Per service
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22. Exposing Our Cluster | Strategy
● Kubernetes offers a few ways to expose services outside of the cluster:
○ LoadBalancer
■ Make the service of type LoadBalancer
■ Cloud provider will automatically assign a LB for this service
■ Pros:
● Simple (when on cloud)
■ Cons:
● LB is often an expensive and scarce resource
● Per service
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● Although these methods can be just enough for our purpose, as
you’ve probably understood, we can do better.

23. Exposing Our Cluster | Strategy
● Ingress - Kubernetes HTTP-based load-balancing system
● LB (layer 7) is used to accept connections on port 80/443 (HTTP/S)
● It then forwards the requests to the proper application
○ Based on URL and Headers
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● Configuring the LB can be a complex task
● Ingress mechanism is split to Controller & Spec
● Controller is pluggable
○ You can choose one of many controllers out there
● Spec is defined by k8s Ingress objects
● These Ingress objects are used as rules for the Ingress Controller
○ According to which it directs the traffic

24. Exposing Our Cluster | Strategy
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Internet Cluster
LB
User
Ingress
Controller
Ingress
Object 1
App 1
App 2
Ingress
Object 2

25. Exposing Our Cluster | Strategy
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● For this tutorial we are going to use Ingress Controller called Contour
● This controller is used to configure the Envoy LB
○ It converts the k8s Ingress objects to something Envoy can understand

26. Exposing Our Cluster | Redis FE
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● As mentioned, we’d like to have a simple Redis FE that will abstract the
internals of Redis for the external users
● We build this microservice using FastAPI
● It will support adding/getting items from Redis

27. Exposing Our Cluster | Redis FE
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sentinel = Sentinel([('redis-0.redis', 26379)], socket_timeout=0.1)
@router.put("/{key}",summary="Create redis item", response_model=AddItemResponse)
def add(key: str, req: AddItemRequest):
logger.info("Adding redis item", key=key, value=req.value)
master = sentinel.master_for("redis") # slaves are read-only; use master for writes
master.set(key, req.value)
return AddItemResponse(key=key, value=req.value)
@router.get("/{key}", summary="Get redis item", response_model=GetItemResponse)
def get(key: str):
logger.info("Getting redis item", key=key)
slave = sentinel.slave_for("redis") # use slave for reads
value = slave.get(key)
if value is None:
raise HTTPException(status_code=404, detail="Item not found")
logger.info("Got redis item", key=key, value=value)
return GetItemResponse(key=key, value=value)

28. Exposing Our Cluster | Redis FE
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● Just before we deploy our Redis FE, we need to define the Kubernetes
objects for deploying and exposing it
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: redisfe
labels:
app: redisfe
spec:
selector:
app: redisfe
ports:
- name: http
port: 7042
targetPort: http
protocol: TCP
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: redisfe-ingress
spec:
backend:
serviceName: redisfe
servicePort: 7042

29. Exposing Our Cluster | Redis FE
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apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: redisfe
spec:
replicas: 1
strategy:
type: RollingUpdate
selector:
matchLabels:
app: redisfe
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: redisfe
….
….
spec:
containers:
- name: redisfe
image: registry.hub.docker.com/idanatias/redis-fe:latest
imagePullPolicy: Always
ports:
- name: http
containerPort: 7042
livenessProbe:
httpGet:
path: /healthz
port: http
initialDelaySeconds: 30
readinessProbe:
httpGet:
path: /healthz
port: http
initialDelaySeconds: 30

30. Redis on Kubernetes - End
Deployment Overview
https://github.com/IdanAtias/redis-on-k8s
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