Redis Best Practices

Priority: P0 (CRITICAL)

Redis is fast only when key shape, TTL ownership, and command complexity are explicit.

Rules

• Namespace keys by product/domain and entity.
• Give cache keys a TTL or a documented reason not to expire.
• Pick eviction policy to match workload: allkeys-lru for general caches, volatile-lru for mixed persistent/ephemeral data. Monitor hit rate and evictions.
• Avoid slow or unbounded commands in hot paths; prefer SCAN over KEYS and UNLINK over DEL for large-key deletion. lazyfree settings help background reclamation.

Verify

• Key naming identifies owner and invalidation scope.
• TTL or eviction policy exists for non-durable data.
• Large reads use bounded range/scan patterns.
• Connection timeouts and pool settings are explicit.
• Critical state does not exist only in Redis.