Redis on Fly

The limited, "built-in" Redis caching that was previously known as Fly Redis is deprecated. We recommend running Redis as a standard Fly.io app.

Redis is a versatile key/value database. This guide explains how to run it as a Fly.io app in a single region, with persistent storage. It will only be visible to apps in the same deployment organization.

Quick Setup

Run these commands to get a Redis instance with persistent storage running in a single region.

Create a directory and create a new app. Be sure to replace my-redis with a custom name. When prompted, pick a region and a Fly organization.

mkdir redis
cd redis
fly launch --image flyio/redis:6.2.6 --no-deploy --name my-redis

Add a 1GB storage volume (or larger) and attach it to your app in fly.toml. Pick the same region as before!

fly volumes create redis_server --size 1
cat >> fly.toml <<TOML
  [[mounts]]
    destination = "/data"
    source = "redis_server"
TOML

Set a password on your Redis instance. A password must be set before deploying.

fly secrets set REDIS_PASSWORD=yoursecretpassword

Keep track of this password - it won't be visible again after deployment! More on fly secrets here.

Now remove the contents of the default [[services]] block in fly.toml (leaving the [[services]] header). This ensures your Redis VM is not visible from the public internet.

Finally, deploy Redis!

fly deploy

Check that things are running correctly.

fly status

Your Redis instance should be available from any other app in the same organization at this URL:

redis://default:yoursecretpassword@my-redis.internal:6379

Test the Redis Server

You can login to your Redis instance with fly ssh console to test the deployment.

fly ssh console -a my-redis

Connecting to top1.nearest.of.my-fly-redis.internal... complete
/ # redis-cli

Once in the redis-cli, authenticate with your password. Then you can Redis commands interactively on the server.

127.0.0.1:6379> auth yoursecretpassword
OK
127.0.0.1:6379> ping
PONG

Configuration Options

By default the Redis image will set a maxmemory of 90% of the VM's available memory and use the allkeys-lru eviction policy, which is a good choice for most use cases, such as caching. You can change these settings by assigning environment variables in fly.toml or by setting secrets.

For example, to configure Redis not to evict any keys you can use:

flyctl secrets set MAXMEMORY_POLICY="noeviction"

Or, if you want to trade decreased performance for increased data loss protection by enabling the Append Only File option:

flyctl secrets set APPENDONLY="yes"

Check out the Redis docs for more info on cache eviction policies and persistence options.

More Details

fly launch creates the application and sets it up for deployment using our official Redis Docker image.

Adding a persistent storage volume is optional. If you skip this step, data will be lost across deploys or restarts. The volume needs to be in the same region as the Redis app instance.

Other apps within the same organization can still access the Redis server over the Fly.io private network from any region as long as they share the same organization.

Volumes will pin your Redis instance to the volume region. Without volumes, apps can be deployed to backup regions in certain cases. If you have a client app that accesses Redis, ensure it stays in the same region as Redis by setting the primary and backup regions to the same values:

fly regions set lax -a myapp
fly regions backup lax -a myapp