Deploy Redis

This guides shows you how to use Redis, an open-source in-memory storage, used as a distributed, in-memory key–value database, cache and message broker, with optional durability.

To run it example, follow these steps:

1. Install the kraft CLI tool and a container runtime engine, e.g. Docker.

2. Clone the examples repository and cd into the examples/redis/ directory:

git clone https://github.com/kraftcloud/examples
cd examples/redis/

Make sure to log into Unikraft Cloud by setting your token and a metro close to you. We use fra0 (Frankfurt, 🇩🇪) in this guide:

# Set Unikraft Cloud access token
export UKC_TOKEN=token
# Set metro to Frankfurt, DE
export UKC_METRO=fra0

When done, invoke the following command to deploy this application on Unikraft Cloud:

kraft cloud deploy -p 6379:6379/tls -M 512 .

The output shows the instance URL and other details:

[●] Deployed successfully!
 │
 ├────────── name: redis-alb4r
 ├────────── uuid: d3c3141b-97b2-4e1d-87ae-39e4f14ab49e
 ├───────── state: running
 ├────────── fqdn: rough-wind-8vxrd1ms.fra0.kraft.host
 ├───────── image: redis@sha256:9665c51faf7deb538cf7907b012b55700cad08cd391f5ba099d95d018c8da7d
 ├───── boot time: 26.13 ms
 ├──────── memory: 512 MiB
 ├─────── service: rough-wind-8vxrd1ms
 ├── private fqdn: redis-alb4r.internal
 ├──── private ip: 172.16.6.2
 └────────── args: /usr/bin/redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf

In this case, the instance name is redis-alb4r; it’s different for every run.

To test the deployment, first forward the port with the kraft cloud tunnel command:

kraft cloud tunnel 6379:memcached-arkv7:6379

Then, from another console, you can now use the redis-benchmark client to connect to Redis, for example:

redis-benchmark -t ping,set,get -n 10000

You should see output similar to:

====== PING_INLINE ======
  10000 requests completed in 32.03 seconds
  50 parallel clients
  3 bytes payload
  keep alive: 1
  host configuration "save":
  host configuration "appendonly": no
  multi-thread: no

0.01% <= 138 milliseconds
0.05% <= 139 milliseconds
2.34% <= 140 milliseconds
4.49% <= 141 milliseconds
8.57% <= 142 milliseconds
16.06% <= 143 milliseconds
21.83% <= 144 milliseconds
26.25% <= 145 milliseconds
34.54% <= 146 milliseconds
...

To disconnect, simply kill the tunnel command with ctrl-C

Note

We use kraft cloud tunnel only when a service doesn’t support TLS and is not HTTP-based (we use TLS/SNI to determine the correct instance to send traffic to). Also note that tunnel command is not needed when connecting via an instance’s private IP/FQDN, ie, when a Redis instance is used as a backend to another instance that acts as a frontend and which does support TLS.

At any point in time, you can list information about the instance:

kraft cloud instance list

NAME           FQDN                               STATE    CREATED AT      IMAGE                              MEMORY   ARGS                               BOOT TIME
redis-alb4r    rough-wind-8vxrd1ms.fra0.kraft...  running  1 minute ago    redis@sha256:9665c51faf7deb5...    512 MiB  /usr/bin/redis-server /etc/red...  26131us

When done, you can remove the instance:

kraft cloud instance remove redis-alb4r

Customize your Application

To customize the application, update the files in the repository, listed below:

• Kraftfile: the Unikraft Cloud specification, including command-line arguments
• Dockerfile: In case you need to add files to your instance’s rootfs

Kraftfile

spec: v0.6

runtime: redis:latest

rootfs: ./Dockerfile

cmd: ["/usr/bin/redis-server", "/etc/redis/redis.conf"]

Dockerfile

FROM debian:bookworm AS build

RUN set -xe; \
    echo "Your code here";

FROM scratch

# Copy your files here
# COPY --from=build / /

Learn More

Use the --help option for detailed information on using Unikraft Cloud:

kraft cloud --help

Or visit the CLI Reference.