Redis Production Configuration Guide

Overview

Redis is an optional, soft dependency in OmniRoute — the application degrades gracefully (in-memory fallbacks) when Redis is unavailable. In production, tuning Redis reduces latency for four distinct workloads:

Workload	Driver	Client Factory	Key Pattern
Rate limiting	rateLimiter.ts	getRedisClient() — lazy ioredis singleton	<prefix>rl:* Lua‑atomic rate limit windows
Auth cache	apiKeys.ts	Reuses rateLimiter’s client	<prefix>auth:api_key:<sha256> with TTL
Quota store	redisQuotaStore.ts	Separate getRedisClient(url) singleton	<prefix>quota:* configurable per-instance
Warmup circuit breaker	redisCircuitBreakerStore.ts	Separate client in circuitBreakerFactory.ts	<prefix>warmup:cb:<connectionId>

All four workloads share one namespace prefix so OmniRoute can co-exist with other apps on a single Redis instance (e.g. 127.0.0.1:6379). See Key Namespacing.

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Current Configuration (Code Defaults)

Setting	Value	Where
REDIS_URL env var	redis://redis:6379 (compose), optional	rateLimiter.ts:5, .env.example
REDIS_KEY_PREFIX env var	omniroute: (default)	rateLimiter.ts, redisQuotaStore.ts, redisCircuitBreakerStore.ts, .env.example
QUOTA_STORE_REDIS_URL env var	separate, can differ from REDIS_URL	quota/storeFactory.ts
QUOTA_STORE_DRIVER	"sqlite" (default), "redis" optional	quota/storeFactory.ts
ioredis maxRetriesPerRequest	3	rateLimiter.ts client creation
enableReadyCheck	not set (ioredis default: true)	—
lazyConnect	not set (ioredis default: false)	—
retryStrategy	not set (ioredis default: 200ms base, exponential)	—
TLS / password / DB index	not configured	—
Sentinel / Cluster	not configured — standalone single-node only	—

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Key Namespacing

OmniRoute shares a Redis instance with whatever else runs on the host. Without a namespace, keys like auth:api_key:<sha256> or rl:* could collide with keys from other applications using the same Redis (this instance runs Redis on 127.0.0.1:6379 alongside other services).

Set REDIS_KEY_PREFIX to a non-empty string to prefix every OmniRoute key:

# .env — all OmniRoute keys become omniroute:rl:*, omniroute:auth:*, omniroute:quota:*, omniroute:warmup:cb:*
REDIS_KEY_PREFIX=omniroute:

• Default: omniroute: (applied when REDIS_KEY_PREFIX is unset or blank).
• Applied to: rate limiter + auth cache (shared ioredis client via keyPrefix) and the quota store (KEY_PREFIX = "${REDIS_KEY_PREFIX}quota") and the warmup circuit breaker (KEY_PREFIX = "${REDIS_KEY_PREFIX}warmup:cb:").
• Changing the prefix when keys already exist in Redis orphans the old keys (they expire via TTL / LRU). Safe to change; no migration needed. The one exception is a warmup circuit-breaker key for a connection marked forbidden: it is persisted without a TTL, so list leftovers with redis-cli --scan --pattern '<old-prefix>warmup:cb:*' and delete them.
• ioredis keyPrefix automatically prepends the prefix on writes and strips it on reads, so application code never sees the prefix.

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Recommended Production Tuning

1. Connection Pool / Client Options (ioredis Redis constructor)

The current code creates a single new Redis(url) with no custom options. For production multi‑replica deployments, pass a client factory in the code or wrap getRedisClient():

const redis = new Redis(REDIS_URL, {
  maxRetriesPerRequest: null,   // no retry limit; let retryStrategy decide
  enableReadyCheck: true,       // verify server is ready before accepting calls
  lazyConnect: true,            // don't connect on construction; wait for first call
  retryStrategy: (times) => {
    if (times > 10) return null;       // give up after 10 retries → reconnect later
    return Math.min(times * 200, 5000); // 200ms, 400ms, …, 5s cap
  },
  enableAutoPipelining: true,   // coalesce concurrent commands into one TCP write
  keepAlive: 10000,             // TCP keep‑alive every 10s
});

Key trade-offs:

• maxRetriesPerRequest: null + retryStrategy — preferred for production so transient Redis restarts don’t immediately fail every request. The in-memory fallback in checkRateLimit() absorbs the failure path.
• lazyConnect: true — avoids a startup dependency on Redis being up before the server begins accepting connections.
• enableAutoPipelining: true — reduces round-trips for concurrent rate-limit checks; beneficial at >50 RPS on a single connection.

2. Redis Server Configuration (redis.conf)

# Memory
maxmemory 80%                        # leave room for OS page cache
maxmemory-policy allkeys-lru         # evict stale auth cache entries under pressure

# Persistence (optional — OmniRoute is crash‑safe without it)
save 300 1                           # snapshot at least every 5 min if ≥1 key changed
appendonly no                        # AOF not needed; data is regeneratable
appendfsync no                       # no fsync overhead (RDB is sufficient)

# Networking
timeout 0                            # no idle disconnect
tcp-keepalive 300                    # 5 min keep‑alive
tcp-backlog 511                      # connection backlog for bursty load

# Performance
hz 10                                # default; 100 for latency‑sensitive
activedefrag yes                     # auto‑defragment when fragmentation >10%

Trade-off for maxmemory-policy allkeys-lru: Auth cache entries may be evicted under memory pressure. This is safe — setCachedApiKey always re-populates on miss, and the SQLite fallback is authoritative. The rate-limiter Lua script creates small keys that are short-lived by design.

3. Docker Compose Settings

The prod compose (docker-compose.prod.yml) uses redis:8.6.2-alpine. Add:

redis:
  image: redis:8.6.2-alpine
  command: [
    "redis-server",
    "--maxmemory", "512mb",
    "--maxmemory-policy", "allkeys-lru",
    "--activedefrag", "yes",
    "--save", "300 1",
  ]
  healthcheck:
    test: ["CMD", "redis-cli", "ping"]
    interval: 10s
    timeout: 3s
    retries: 3
    start_period: 5s

4. Multi‑Instance / Scaling Considerations

Single Redis for all replicas — the rate-limiter Lua script depends on a single authoritative key space. Multiple Redis instances behind replicas would lose atomicity and double the budget. Use a single Redis (or Redis Sentinel cluster with failover) for all application replicas.

Connection count: Each application replica opens 2 TCP connections to Redis (rate limiter client + quota store client). At 10 replicas → 20 connections, well within a default Redis instance’s 10k connection ceiling.

5. Monitoring

Expose via health-check endpoint:

// src/app/api/monitoring/health/route.ts already calls rateLimiter functions
// Add Redis-specific checks:
//   1. PING latency via ioredis .ping()
//   2. Memory usage via INFO memory
//   3. Connection count via INFO clients
//   4. Hit rate for maxmemory-policy (evicted_keys / keyspace_hits)

Key metrics to watch:

• Evicted keys / sec — if persistently non-zero, increase maxmemory
• Blocked clients — non-zero suggests slow Lua scripts or high contention
• Rejected connections — connection limit hit; rare at 20 connections

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Architecture Diagram

flowchart LR
    subgraph App["App Replica"]
        RL[rateLimiter.ts]
        AK[apiKeys.ts]
        QS[redisQuotaStore.ts]
    end
    RL -- "REDIS_URL" --> R1[(Redis\nshared)]
    AK -- "reuses RL's client" --> R1
    QS -- "QUOTA_STORE_REDIS_URL" --> R2[(Redis\nquota store)]
    R1 --> R2 -- "can be same instance" --> R1

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References

File	Purpose
src/shared/utils/rateLimiter.ts	Primary Redis client, Lua rate-limit script, in-memory fallback
src/lib/db/apiKeys.ts	Auth cache — Redis→SQLite fallback
src/lib/quota/redisQuotaStore.ts	Separate Redis client for optional quota store
src/lib/quota/storeFactory.ts	Switches between sqlite and redis quota drivers
docker-compose.prod.yml	Prod Redis container (image redis:8.6.2-alpine)
.env.example	Redis env vars documentation
src/app/api/local/redis/	API routes for dev container orchestration
bin/cli/commands/redis.mjs	CLI commands for dev container orchestration

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