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Creating a Redis instance explicitly

We recommend creating your Redis instances in their own workflow for more control over configuration, especially if you intend for multiple applications using the same Redis instance, or if you need to change configuration.

Creating a Redis instance is done by adding a Redis resource to your namespace with detailed configuration. Some configuration is enforced by the nais platform, while the rest is up to the users.

Earlier we talked about the "instance name". In reality, the actual name of the redis instance will be redis-<team name>-<instance name> (where team name is the same as the namespace your application resides in). The resource needs to have this full name in order to be accepted.

The default Redis created by nais looks like this:

apiVersion: aiven.io/v1alpha1
kind: Redis
metadata:
  labels:
    app: redis-tester
    team: myteam
  name: redis-myteam-sessions
  namespace: myteam
spec:
  plan: startup-4
  project: nav-dev

A minimal Redis resource only requires plan and project.

  • project should match your nais tenant (nav) and the environment you are running in (ex. dev, prod), with a dash (-) in between.
  • plan is the Aiven plan for your Redis instance. See Aivens list of possible plan values. The values are lowercased. Make sure you understand the differences between the plans before selecting the one you need. Examples: startup-4, startup-56, business-4, premium-14.

We use Aivens operator, so the Redis resource is documented in detail in the Aiven documentation. You should look at the reference for any other fields that might be of interest.

Probably the most important value to consider is which plan to use.

The Startup plans are good for things like sessions or cache usage, where High Availability in case of failures is not important. Upgrades and regular maintenance is handled without noticeable downtime, by adding a new upgraded node and replicating data over to it before switching over DNS and shutting down the old node. Startup plans are backed up every 12 hours, keeping 1 backup available.

If you require HA, the Business plans provide for one failover node that takes over should your primary instance fail for any reason. When using business plans, a second node is always available with continuous replication, so it is able to start serving data immediately should the primary node fail. Business plans are backed up every 12 hours, keeping 3 days of backups available.

Once the resource is added to the cluster, some additional fields are filled in by the platform and should be left alone unless you have a good reason:

field
projectVpcId Ensures the instance is connected to the correct project VPC and is not available on public Internet.
tags Adds tags to the instance used for tracking billing in Aiven.
cloudName Where the Redis instance should run.
terminationProtection Protects the instance against unintended termination. Must be set to false before deletion.

There are some fields available that should not be used:

field
authSecretRef Reference to a secret containing an Aiven API token. Provided via other mechanisms.
connInfoSecretTarget Name of secret to put connection info in, not used as nais provides these via other mechanisms.
projectVPCRef Not used since we use projectVpcId.
serviceIntegrations Not used at this time.

ServiceIntegration

A ServiceIntegration is used to integrate the Redis instance with Prometheus. It is pretty straight forward, with little to no configuration needed.

Simple 5 steps procedure:

  1. Copy the below yaml into a file (it can be the same file as your Redis instance)
  2. Replace <ENV> with the environment you are running in (ex. dev, prod) (in field project)
  3. Replace <MYTEAM> with your team name (in labels, namespace and sourceServiceName)
  4. Replace <INSTANCE> with the last part of the name of your Redis instance (in name and sourceServiceName)
  5. Replace <ENDPONT-ID> with the endpoint ID from the table below (in destinationEndpointId)
  6. Deploy the resource using the same pipeline as you use for your Redis instance
redis.yaml 
---
apiVersion: aiven.io/v1alpha1
kind: ServiceIntegration
metadata:
    labels:
        team: <MYTEAM>
    name: redis-<MYTEAM>-<INSTANCE>
    namespace: <MYTEAM>
spec:
    project: nav-<ENV>
    integrationType: prometheus
    destinationEndpointId: <ENDPONT-ID>
    sourceServiceName: redis-<MYTEAM>-<INSTANCE>

Prometheus Endpoint IDs

Environment Endpoint ID
nav-dev f20f5b48-18f4-4e2a-8e5f-4ab3edb19733
nav-prod 76685598-1048-4f56-b34a-9769ef747a92