Redis Connections

Client-side guidance for talking to Redis efficiently: how to share connections, how to batch commands, which commands not to call in production, when to turn on client-side caching, and how to set timeouts that fail fast without breaking healthy traffic.

When to apply

• Creating or reviewing a Redis client setup (redis-py, Jedis, Lettuce, go-redis, NRedisStack).
• Making many small Redis calls and wondering where the latency is going.
• Iterating large keyspaces, sets, hashes, or lists.
• Enabling client-side caching for hot keys.
• Tuning connect / read / write timeouts.

1. Pool or multiplex — never one connection per request

The single biggest mistake in Redis client code is opening a new TCP connection for every operation. Always either:

• Pool — keep N persistent connections that the application leases per call (redis-py ConnectionPool, Jedis JedisPooled, go-redis client).
• Multiplex — share a single connection across all requests (Lettuce, NRedisStack).