How to Install and Configure a Redis Cluster on Ubuntu 16.04

Updated Friday, June 1, 2018 by Sam Foo Written by Sam Foo

Redis clusters have grown to be a popular tool for caches, queues, and more because of its potential for scalability and speed. This guide aims to create a cluster using three Linodes to demonstrate sharding. Then, you will promote a slave to a master - insurance, in the event of a failure.

Redis as an in-memory store allows for extremely fast operations such as counting, caching, queuing, and more. A cluster setup greatly increases the reliability of Redis by reducing the point of failures.

Prior to starting, we recommend you familiarize yourself with the following:

• Firewall settings using iptables or ufw
• Master/Slave Replication

Install Redis on Each Linode

Depending on your version of Linux, it may be possible to install Redis through a package manager. Only Redis 3.0 and above supports clustering. The steps below are for installation of the latest stable branch of Redis.

1. Install the dependencies:

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
   sudo apt install make gcc libc6-dev tcl
   

   Note

   Alternatively, you could use build-essential to load the dependencies for Redis.

2. From the documentation, download the current stable branch, then extract:

   wget http://download.redis.io/redis-stable.tar.gz
   tar xvzf redis-stable.tar.gz
   cd redis-stable
   sudo make install
   

3. Ensure the installation is successful by running:

   make test
   

   If installation is successful, the console will output:

   \o/ All tests passed without errors!

4. Repeat installation for each and every server that will be part of the cluster.

Configure Master and Slave Nodes

This guide manually connects each master and slave across three Linodes. Consider using tmux for management of multiple terminal windows.

Although the official documentation recommends creating six nodes, this guide will use the minimum of three nodes with the following topology:

This setup uses three Linodes running two instances of Redis server per Linode. You must ensure each host is independent, and then consider using additional nodes if there is a need to maintain uptime requirements.

1. SSH into server 1. Navigate to redis-stable/ then copy redis.conf. Configuration files in this guide are named consistent with the figure above:

   cp redis.conf c_slave.conf
   mv redis.conf a_master.conf
   

2. In a_master.conf, comment the bind directive and enable cluster mode. The ports in this example will range from 6379 to 6381.

   /redis-stable/a_master.conf

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7

   # bind 127.0.0.1 protected-mode no port 6379 pidfile /var/run/redis_6379.pid cluster-enabled yes cluster-config-file nodes-6379.conf cluster-node-timeout 15000

   Caution

   A node in the Redis cluster requires a defined port and a port higher than 10000. In this instance, TCP ports 6379 and 16379 are both required to be open. Ensure iptables or ufw is configured properly.

3. In c_slave.conf, the configuration will be similar except for an update of the port number. redis-trib.rb will be used later to configure this into a slave for the appropriate master, rather than the slaveof directive.

   /redis-stable/c_slave.conf

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7

   # bind 127.00.1 protected-mode no port 6381 pidfile /var/run/redis_6381.pid cluster-enabled yes cluster-config-file nodes-6381.conf cluster-node-timeout 15000

4. Repeat this process across the remaining two Linodes, taking care to specify the port numbers for all master slave pairs.

   Server	Master	Slave
   1	6379	6381
   2	6380	6379
   3	6381	6380

Connect Master and Slave

Master/slave replication can be achieved across three nodes by running two instances of a Redis server on each node.

1. SSH into server 1 and start the two Redis instances.

   redis-server redis-stable/a_master.conf
   redis-server redis-stable/c_slave.conf
   

2. Substitute a_master.conf and c_slave.conf with the appropriate configuration file for the remaining two servers. All the master nodes should be starting in cluster mode.

   Server 1

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

   _._ _.-``__ ''-._ _.-`` `. `_. ''-._ Redis 4.0.1 (00000000/0) 64 bit .-`` .-```. ```\/ _.,_ ''-._ ( ' , .-` | `, ) Running in cluster mode |`-._`-...-` __...-.``-._|'` _.-'| Port: 6379 | `-._ `._ / _.-' | PID: 10352 `-._ `-._ `-./ _.-' _.-' |`-._`-._ `-.__.-' _.-'_.-'| | `-._`-._ _.-'_.-' | http://redis.io `-._ `-._`-.__.-'_.-' _.-' |`-._`-._ `-.__.-' _.-'_.-'| | `-._`-._ _.-'_.-' | `-._ `-._`-.__.-'_.-' _.-' `-._ `-.__.-' _.-' `-._ _.-' `-.__.-'

Create Cluster Using Built-In Ruby Script

At this point, each Linode hosts two independent master nodes. The Redis installation comes with a Ruby script located in ~/redis-stable/src/ that can help create and manage a cluster.

1. If Ruby is not already installed, it can be found in your package manager:

   sudo apt install ruby
   

2. Install the Redis gem:

   gem install redis
   

3. Navigate to the source directory to run the script.

   redis-stable/src/redis-trib.rb create ip.of.server1:6379 ip.of.server2:6380 ip.of.server3:6381
   

4. Accept the configuration with three masters. Successful set up of the cluster will return the following message:

   >>>Creating cluster
   >>>Performing hash slots allocation on 3 nodes...
   Can I set the above configuration? (type 'yes' to accept): yes
   >>> Nodes configuration updated
   >>> Assign a different config epoch to each node
   >>> Sending CLUSTER MEET messages to join the cluster
   Waiting for the cluster to join.
   [OK] All nodes agree about slots configuration.
   >>> Check for open slots...
   >>> Check slots coverage...
   [OK] All 16384 slots covered.
   

5. See all the current nodes connected to the cluster by using the redis-cli tool. The -c flag specifies connection to the cluster.

   redis-cli -c -h ip.of.server1 -p 6379
   ip.of.server1>CLUSTER NODES
   

   This will return a list of nodes currently in the cluster identified by their i.d. and slaves - if any exist. To leave the interface, click on exit.

   ip.of.server1>exit
   

   Note

   Redis keywords are not case sensitive. However, they are written as all capitals in this guide for clarity.

Add Slaves

The redis-trib tool can also be used to add new nodes to the cluster. Using the remaining three nodes, you can manually add them to the selected master.

1. Connect the slave to a given master using add-note and a specified master_id.

   ./redis-trib.rb add-node --slave --master-id [master_id_c] ip.of.server1:6381 ip.of.server3:6381
   

   The resulting output should be:

   >>> Adding node ip.of.server1:6381 to cluster ip.of.server3:6381
   >>> Performing Cluster Check (using node ip.of.server3:6381)
   M: [master_id_c] ip.of.server3:6381
      slots:10923-16383 (5461 slots) master
      0 additional replica(s)
   M: [master_id_a] ip.of.server1:6379
      slots:0-5460 (5461 slots) master
      0 additional replica(s)
   M: [master_id_b] ip.of.server2:6380
      slots:5461-10922 (5462 slots) master
      0 additional replica(s)
   [OK] All nodes agree about slots configuration.
   >>> Check for open slots...
   >>> Check slots coverage...
   [OK] All 16384 slots covered.
   >>> Send CLUSTER MEET to node ip.of.server1:6381 to make it join the cluster.
   Waiting for the cluster to join...
   >>> Configure node as replica of ip.of.server3:6381.
   

2. Repeat for the remaining two nodes.

   ./redis-trib.rb add-node --slave --master-id [master_id_a] ip.of.server2:6379 ip.of.server1:6379
   ./redis-trib.rb add-node --slave --master-id [master_id_b] ip.of.server3:6380 ip.of.server2:6380
   

Add Key-Value Pairs and Sharding

The command line interface offers a way to SET and GET keys, in addition to returning information about the cluster. On your local computer, you can connect to any of the master nodes and explore some properties of a Redis cluster.

1. Repeat the installation of Redis on your local computer, if needed. Check that firewall settings allow communicating with the master nodes.

   redis-cli -c -h ip.of.server1 -p 6379
   

2. Use the CLUSTER INFO command to see information about the state of the cluster such as size, hash slots, and failures, if any.

   ip.of.server1:6379>CLUSTER INFO
   cluster_state:ok
   cluster_slots_assigned:16384
   cluster_slots_ok:16384
   cluster_slots_pfail:0
   cluster_slots_fail:0
   cluster_known_nodes:6
   cluster_size:3
   cluster_current_epoch:6
   cluster_my_epoch:1
   cluster_stats_messages_ping_sent:8375
   cluster_stats_messages_pong_sent:9028
   cluster_stats_messages_meet_sent:1
   cluster_stats_messages_sent:17404
   cluster_stats_messages_ping_received:9022
   cluster_stats_messages_pong_received:8376
   cluster_stats_messages_meet_received:6
   cluster_stats_messages_received:17404
   

3. To check master/slave replication, INFO replication returns information about the slave.

   ip.of.server1:6379>INFO replication
   role:master
   connected_slaves:1
   slave0:ip=ip.of.server1,port=6381,state=online,offset=213355,lag=1
   master_replid:cd2e27cba094f2e7ed38b0313dcd6a979ab29b7a
   master_replid2:0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
   master_repl_offset:213355
   second_repl_offset:-1
   repl_backlog_active:1
   repl_backlog_size:1048576
   repl_backlog_first_byte_offset:197313
   repl_backlog_histlen:16043
   

4. To demonstrate sharding, you can set a few example key-value pairs. Setting a key will redirect the value to a hash slot among the three master nodes.

   ip.of.server1:6379> SET John Adams
   -> Redirected to slot [6852] located at ip.of.server2:6380
   OK
   ip.of.server2:6380> SET James Madison
   -> Redirected to slot [2237] located at ip.of.server1:6379
   OK
   ip.of.server1:6379> SET Andrew Jackson
   -> Redirected to slot [15768] located at ip.of.server3:6381
   OK
   ip.of.server3:6381> GET John
   -> Redirected to slot [6852] located at ip.of.server2:6380
   "Adams"
   ip.of.server2:6380>
   

Promote Slave to Master

Based on the current topology, the cluster will remain online if one of the Linodes fails. At that point, you can expect a slave to promote into a master with the data replicated.

1. Add a key value pair.

   ip.of.server1:6379> SET foo bar
   -> Redirected to slot [12182] located at ip.of.server3:6381
   OK
   ip.of.server3:6381> GET foo
   "bar"
   

   The key foo is added to a master on server 3 and replicated to a slave on server 1.

2. In the event server 3 is down, the slave on server 1 will become a master and the cluster will remain online.

   ip.of.server1:6379> CLUSTER NODES
   [slave_id_b] ip.of.server3:6380@16380 slave,fail [master_id_b] 1502722149010 1502722147000 6 connected
   [slave_id_a] ip.of.server2:6379@16379 slave [master_id_a] 0 1502722242000 5 connected
   [slave_id_c_promoted] ip.of.server1:6381@16381 master - 0 1502722241651 7 connected 10923-16383
   [master_id_b] ip.of.server2:6380@16380 master - 0 1502722242654 2 connected 5461-10922
   [master_id_c] ip.of.server3:6381@16381 master,fail - 1502722149010 1502722145402 3 connected
   [master_id_a] ip.of.server1:6379@16379 myself,master - 0 1502722241000 1 connected 0-5460
   

3. A key that was previously located in a hash slot on server 3, the key value pair is now stored on server 1.

   ip.of.server1:6379> GET foo
   -> Redirected to slot [12182] located at ip.of.server1:6381
   "bar"
   

Remember to ensure firewall settings are adequate for all Redis instances. There is supplemental functionality, such as adding additional nodes, creating multiple slaves, or resharding, which are beyond the scope of this document. For more guidance, consult the official Redis documentation for how to implement these features.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• Redis Official Website
• Install and Configure Redis on CentOS 7

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