README

This Zend_Cache backend allows you to use a Redis server as a central cache storage. Tags are fully supported without the use of TwoLevels cache so this backend is great for use on a single machine or in a cluster. Works with any Zend Framework project including all versions of Magento!

FEATURES

• Uses the phpredis PECL extension for best performance (requires master branch or tagged version newer than Aug 19 2011).
• Falls back to standalone PHP if phpredis isn't available using the Credis library.
• Tagging is fully supported, implemented using the Redis "set" and "hash" data types for efficient tag management.
• Key expiration is handled automatically by Redis.
• Supports unix socket connection for even better performance on a single machine.
• Supports configurable compression for memory savings. Can choose between gzip, lzf and snappy and can change configuration without flushing cache.
• Uses transactions to prevent race conditions between saves, cleans or removes causing unexpected results.
• Supports a configurable "auto expiry lifetime" which, if set, will be used as the TTL when the key otherwise wouldn't expire. In combination with "auto expiry refresh on load" offers a more sane cache management strategy for Magento's Enterprise_PageCache module.
• Unit tested!

REQUIREMENTS

As this backend uses Credis there are no additional requirements, but for improved performance you can install phpredis which is a compiled extension.

• For 2.4 support you must use the "master" branch or a tagged version newer than Aug 19, 2011.
• phpredis is optional, but it is much faster than standalone mode
• phpredis does not support setting read timeouts at the moment (see pull request #260). If you receive read errors (“read error on connection”), this might be the reason.

INSTALLATION

Add the package as a dependency to your project with Composer.

composer require colinmollenhour/cache-backend-redis

modman

It is not the recommended method, but you may install via modman:

modman clone https://github.com/colinmollenhour/Cm_Cache_Backend_Redis

CONFIGURATION

These examples assume you are using Magento, but the configuration can just be passed to the constructor as a PHP array with the same key names as seen in the examples.

Edit app/etc/local.xml to configure:

    <!-- This is a child node of config/global -->
    <cache>
      <backend>Cm_Cache_Backend_Redis</backend>
      <backend_options>
        <server>127.0.0.1</server> <!-- or absolute path to unix socket -->
        <port>6379</port>
        <persistent></persistent> <!-- Specify unique string to enable persistent connections. E.g.: sess-db0; bugs with phpredis and php-fpm are known: https://github.com/nicolasff/phpredis/issues/70 -->
        <database>0</database> <!-- Redis database number; protection against accidental data loss is improved by not sharing databases -->
        <password></password> <!-- Specify if your Redis server requires authentication -->
        <force_standalone>0</force_standalone>  <!-- 0 for phpredis, 1 for standalone PHP -->
        <connect_retries>1</connect_retries>    <!-- Reduces errors due to random connection failures; a value of 1 will not retry after the first failure -->
        <read_timeout>10</read_timeout>         <!-- Set read timeout duration; phpredis does not currently support setting read timeouts -->
        <automatic_cleaning_factor>0</automatic_cleaning_factor> <!-- Disabled by default -->
        <compress_data>1</compress_data>  <!-- 0-9 for compression level, recommended: 0 or 1 -->
        <compress_tags>1</compress_tags>  <!-- 0-9 for compression level, recommended: 0 or 1 -->
        <compress_threshold>20480</compress_threshold>  <!-- Strings below this size will not be compressed -->
        <compression_lib>gzip</compression_lib> <!-- Supports gzip, lzf, lz4 (as l4z), snappy and zstd -->
        <use_lua>0</use_lua> <!-- Set to 1 if Lua scripts should be used for some operations (recommended) -->
        <load_from_slave>tcp://redis-slave:6379</load_from_slave> <!-- Perform reads from a different server --> 
      </backend_options>
    </cache>

    <!-- This is a child node of config/global for Magento Enterprise FPC -->
    <full_page_cache>
      <backend>Cm_Cache_Backend_Redis</backend>
      <backend_options>
        <server>127.0.0.1</server> <!-- or absolute path to unix socket -->
        <port>6379</port>
        <persistent></persistent> <!-- Specify unique string to enable persistent connections. E.g.: sess-db0; bugs with phpredis and php-fpm are known: https://github.com/nicolasff/phpredis/issues/70 -->
        <database>1</database> <!-- Redis database number; protection against accidental data loss is improved by not sharing databases -->
        <password></password> <!-- Specify if your Redis server requires authentication -->
        <force_standalone>0</force_standalone>  <!-- 0 for phpredis, 1 for standalone PHP -->
        <connect_retries>1</connect_retries>    <!-- Reduces errors due to random connection failures -->
        <lifetimelimit>57600</lifetimelimit>    <!-- 16 hours of lifetime for cache record -->
        <compress_data>0</compress_data>        <!-- DISABLE compression for EE FPC since it already uses compression -->
        <auto_expire_lifetime></auto_expire_lifetime> <!-- Force an expiry (Enterprise_PageCache will not set one) -->
        <auto_expire_refresh_on_load></auto_expire_refresh_on_load> <!-- Refresh keys when loaded (Keeps cache primed frequently requested resources) -->
      </backend_options>
    </full_page_cache>

High Availability and Load Balancing Support

Redis Sentinel

You may achieve high availability and load balancing using Redis Sentinel. To enable use of Redis Sentinel the server specified should be a comma-separated list of Sentinel servers and the sentinel_master option should be specified to indicate the name of the sentinel master set (e.g. 'mymaster'). If using sentinel_master you may also specify load_from_slaves in which case a random slave will be chosen for performing reads in order to load balance across multiple Redis instances. Using the value '1' indicates to only load from slaves and '2' to include the master in the random read slave selection.

Example configuration:

    <!-- This is a child node of config/global -->
    <cache>
      <backend>Cm_Cache_Backend_Redis</backend>
      <backend_options>
        <server>tcp://10.0.0.1:26379,tcp://10.0.0.2:26379,tcp://10.0.0.3:26379</server>
        <timeout>0.5</timeout>
        <sentinel_master>mymaster</sentinel_master>
        <sentinel_master_verify>1</sentinel_master_verify>
        <load_from_slaves>1</load_from_slaves>
      </backend_options>
    </cache>

Load Balancer or Service Discovery

It is also possible to achieve high availability by using other methods where you can specify separate connection addresses for the master and slave(s). The load_from_slave option has been added for this purpose and this option does not connect to a Sentinel server as the example above, although you probably would benefit from still having a Sentinel setup purely for the easier replication and failover.

Examples would be to use a TCP load balancer (e.g. HAProxy) with separate ports for master and slaves, or a DNS-based system that uses service discovery health checks to expose master and slaves via different DNS names.

Example configuration:

    <!-- This is a child node of config/global -->
    <cache>
      <backend>Cm_Cache_Backend_Redis</backend>
      <backend_options>
        <server>tcp://redis-master:6379</server>
        <load_from_slave>tcp://redis-slaves:6379</load_from_slave>
        <master_write_only>0</master_write_only>  <!-- Use 1 to prevent reads from master -->
        <timeout>0.5</timeout>
      </backend_options>
    </cache>

Static Configuration

You may also statically specify the master and slave servers by passing either an array to load_from_slave or a string with multiple addresses separated by a comma.

    <!-- This is a child node of config/global -->
    <cache>
      <backend>Cm_Cache_Backend_Redis</backend>
      <backend_options>
        <server>tcp://redis-master:6379</server>
        <load_from_slave>tcp://redis-slave1:6379,tcp://redis-slave2:6379</load_from_slave>
        <master_write_only>0</master_write_only>  <!-- Use 1 to prevent reads from master -->
        <timeout>0.5</timeout>
      </backend_options>
    </cache>

ElastiCache

The following example configuration lets you use ElastiCache Redis (cluster mode disabled) where the writes are sent to the Primary node and reads are sent to the replicas. This lets you distribute the read traffic between the different nodes.

The instructions to find the primary and read replica endpoints are here.

    <!-- This is a child node of config/global/cache -->
    <backend_options>
      <server>primary-endpoint.0001.euw1.cache.amazonaws.com</server>
      <port>6379</port>
      <database>0</database>                    <!-- Make sure database is 0 -->
      <master_write_only>1</master_write_only>
      <load_from_slave>
        <node-001>
          <server>replica-endpoint-1.jwbaun.0001.euw1.cache.amazonaws.com</server>
          <port>6379</port>
        </node-001>
        <node-002>
          <server>replica-endpoint-2.jwbaun.0001.euw1.cache.amazonaws.com</server>
          <port>6379</port>
        </node-002>
      </load_from_slave>
    </backend_options>

DEPRECATION NOTICE

Previously the ElastiCache config instructions suggested setting up a <cluster> node but this functionality was flawed and is no longer supported. The config is still parsed and loaded for backwards-compatibility but chooses a random slave to read from rather than using md5 hash of the keys.

TUNING

• The recommended "maxmemory-policy" is "volatile-lru". All tag metadata is non-volatile, so it is recommended to use key expirations unless non-volatile keys are absolutely necessary so that tag data cannot get evicted. So, be sure that the "maxmemory" is high enough to accommodate all the tag data and non-volatile data with enough room left for the volatile key data as well.
• Automatic cleaning is optional and not recommended since it is slow and uses lots of memory.
• Occasional (e.g. once a day) garbage collection is recommended if the entire cache is infrequently cleared and automatic cleaning is not enabled. The best solution is to run a cron job which does the garbage collection. (See "Example Garbage Collection Script" below.)
• Compression will have additional CPU overhead but may be worth it for memory savings and reduced traffic. For high-latency networks it may even improve performance. Use the Magento Cache Benchmark to analyze your real-world compression performance and test your system's performance with different compression libraries.
  • gzip — Slowest but highest compression. Most likely you will not want to use above level 1 compression.
  • lzf — Fastest compress, fast decompress. Install: sudo pecl install lzf
  • snappy — Fastest decompress, fast compress. Download and install: snappy and php-snappy
• Monitor your redis cache statistics with my modified munin plugin.
• Enable persistent connections. Make sure that if you have multiple configurations connecting the persistent string is unique for each configuration so that "select" commands don't cause conflicts.
• Increase your server's lua-time-limit if you are getting "BUSY" errors. This setting can also cause Redis Sentinel to invoke fail-overs when you would probably prefer to let the Lua script finish and have clients wait a little longer.
• Use the stats.php script to inspect your cache to find over-sized or wasteful cache tags.

Example Garbage Collection Script (Magento)

<?php PHP_SAPI == 'cli' or die('<h1>:P</h1>');
ini_set('memory_limit','1024M');
set_time_limit(0);
error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
require_once 'app/Mage.php';
Mage::app()->getCache()->getBackend()->clean('old');
// uncomment this for Magento Enterprise Edition
// Enterprise_PageCache_Model_Cache::getCacheInstance()->getFrontend()->getBackend()->clean('old');

DEVELOPMENT

Please feel free to send Pull Requests to give back your improvements to the community!

You can run the unit tests locally with just Docker installed using a simple alias:

alias cm-cache-backend-redis='docker run --rm -it -e REDIS_SERVER=host.docker.internal -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v ${COMPOSER_HOME:-$HOME/.composer}:/tmp -v $(pwd):/app --workdir /app cm-cache-backend-redis'
docker build . -t cm-cache-backend-redis

Then start a Redis server, install Composer dependencies and run tests like so:

  docker run --rm -d -p 6379 --name cm-cache-backend-redis redis --maxmemory 20m --maxmemory-policy noeviction
  cm-cache-backend-redis composer install
  cm-cache-backend-redis composer run-script test
  cm-cache-backend-redis composer run-script php-cs-fixer -- --dry-run

@copyright  Copyright (c) 2022 Colin Mollenhour
This project is licensed under the "New BSD" license (see source).