November 2022 Summaries

Google Cloud's T2D VMs, based on third-generation AMD EPYC processors, show up to 75% better price performance than older-generation Rome machines and up to 40% better price performance compared to same-generation Milan machines. The virtual machine family is designed for scale-out workloads without the need to port x86-based applications to new processor architectures. Benchmarking system performance using PerfKit Benchmarker (PKB) helps deliver the best value and experiences, with T2D VMs providing the best price performance for Redis Enterprise software workloads.

Redis Enterprise Software 6.2.18 has been released, focusing on security enhancements, including two new enterprise-grade security features: auditing database connections and authentication events, and integrating private key encryption with third-party password managers. The software now allows users to track failed login attempts, monitor certificate expiration using Redis integration with Prometheus, and troubleshoot issues more efficiently with new commands such as `MEMORY USAGE` and enhanced cluster management capabilities.

Redis Cloud users have requested a way for alerts to be delivered through Slack channels instead of emails. While this feature isn't currently available, there is a workaround that can achieve similar results. The process involves creating a new channel in Slack and setting up notifications for all messages. Then, an email address associated with the Slack account is used to receive alert emails from Redis Cloud. A new user with the role of Viewer is created on the Access Management screen, and the copied email address is pasted in. The activation email for this new user will be sent to the Slack channel, allowing users to accept the invitation and establish a password. This integration enables Redis Cloud alerts to be delivered through Slack channels, improving communication and timely notifications for users who rely on it more than emails.

The Redis and Intel collaboration aims to improve the performance of Redis by automating the process of identifying performance regressions and optimizing database code efficiency through a "zero-touch" performance and profiling automation framework. This framework is designed to scale the pursuit of performance improvements across Redis components, providing insights about how software uses the platform and identifying opportunities for further optimization on Intel CPUs. The goal is to identify shifts in performance as early as possible, allowing developers to understand the impact of their code changes and enabling the design of better products. The framework fosters cross-company and cross-community standards on performance and observability requirements and expectations, aiming to automatically identify performance regressions, gain a deeper understanding of hotspots, and find improvement opportunities.

Leaderboards, commonly associated with computer games, are also used for non-gaming purposes to measure progress, status, and other competitive metrics. They often encourage participation by incorporating gamification elements into everyday tasks. Incorporating leaderboards in applications can be done using various types of leaderboards such as educational systems like Duolingo, Billboard's music sales leaderboard, transportation systems like airports or train stations, financial systems tracking stock market fluctuations and wealth, sports statistics, review sites, sales leaderboards, personal fitness goals, and video games. Each type of leaderboard has its unique design considerations and rewards system to encourage user engagement and motivation.

The Redis community has introduced a dual license for Redis Stack and its modules, including RSALv2 (Redis Source Available License) and the Server Side Public License (SSPLv1). This change aims to provide more freedom and clarity to users while addressing challenges faced with the previous RSALv1. The new RSALv2 is a permissive non-copyleft license, making its permissions and limitations clearer. SSPL, on the other hand, is becoming the de facto standard for source available licenses and is used by millions of developers worldwide. This dual-license approach allows users to choose between a more permissive but less well-known license (RSALv2) or a more standardized copyleft license like SSPL. The default binary distributions of Redis Stack and its modules will be licensed under RSALv2, while the source code can use either RSALv2 or SSPLv1.

Redis is attending AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas on December 1st, bringing its expertise to help businesses answer critical questions about real-time data layers. A real-time data layer is crucial for performance and meeting user expectations, but implementing one can be complex. Redis Enterprise offers a simplified and cost-effective solution with sub-millisecond responsiveness. The company will showcase its product and offer individual attention to attendees at the conference, including expert sessions, demonstrations, and meetings with experts. Additionally, participants can win a Redis Geeks T-shirt or an Oculus Quest 2 by visiting the booth.

RedisGears 2.0 introduces a new feature called triggered functions, which allows developers to react to Redis keyspace notifications and execute business logic within the database. The new feature is built on top of the V8 JavaScript engine, providing high-performance execution and low latency. Triggered functions can be used to update inventory levels in e-commerce applications or normalize data from multiple feeder applications. The initial milestone release focuses on functions executed on database triggers, but its usefulness extends beyond that, as most advanced data structures in Redis Stack also publish their events. To deploy a function, developers provide a single JavaScript file, and the JavaScript community has excellent deployment tools available.

This tutorial helps build a real-time product recommendation system using content-based filtering and vector similarity search, leveraging tools like Redis and DocArray. Recommendation systems are crucial for e-commerce sites to generate good conversions and maintain customer loyalty. The system uses CLIP-as-service to encode visual data and exploits all modalities of the data by modeling user and items as feature vectors. Vector similarity is computed in real-time using efficient techniques such as Hierarchical Navigable Small World (HNSW), implemented in vector databases like Redis. DocArray serves as a universal vector database client with support for multimodal data, making it easy to build a recommendation system in just a few lines of code. The procedure involves provisioning a Redis instance, installing necessary tools, and assembling the tools for the application. The tutorial demonstrates how to create a weighted average of the embeddings of recently-viewed items to recommend products based on user filters and view history, taking into account the importance of recent items.

Redis on Flash (RoF) is a feature in Redis Enterprise that uses Flash memory or solid-state drives to extend DRAM capacity, allowing for faster software performance and cost savings. RoF stores less data in DRAM, moving inactive data to the lower tier of local Flash storage, while maintaining critical data in DRAM. The multi-threaded asynchronous architecture of RoF avoids blocking between caching requests made to Flash and those made to DRAM. RoF is now available for Redis Enterprise for Kubernetes, starting with version 6.2.12, offering a cost-effective solution for customers with large datasets. To enable RoF, users need to follow specific configuration guidelines, including adding YAML files to express the configuration.

Redis is joining forces with RESP.app creator Igor Malinovskiy, bringing popular features from RESP.app into RedisInsight, a tool designed to enhance developer experience and productivity with Redis. The goal of this collaboration is to empower developers to unlock the full potential of Redis and create more productive code for business-critical applications. By combining the strengths of RESP.app and RedisInsight, Redis aims to become the go-to companion tool for software development with any flavor of Redis. This partnership is expected to result in a happier developer experience, leading to increased productivity and adoption of Redis for more use cases.