One of the most common questions we get here at Momento is, “How are you different from Redis?” In this post, we shed some light on the answers to that question.

First of all, we love Redis at Momento! It’s a great technology used by many developers. In fact, it’s been voted #1 most-loved database over many years. However, while Redis is an excellent storage solution, Momento Cache is a full-fledged serverless service that goes beyond raw storage to offer hands-free management of storage technologies (such as Redis).

Instance setup and provisioning

Whether it’s self-managed Redis or managed Redis in the cloud, you have to provision server instances, which can be time-consuming and complex. With instance provisioning comes various controls and configurations — instance sizes, instance families, the number of instances, etc. The burden of picking the right configurations falls entirely on the user. Now, more control isn’t always bad, but if you just want to get started and have someone else manage things like benchmarking, tuning, and optimizations of said instances, that’s where Momento comes in! Momento Cache eliminates the need for provisioning instances altogether, allowing for instant start and scaling to zero. You no longer have to worry about provisioning for peak traffic, then paying when that capacity is idle during off-peak times.

API-centric development

Instead of APIs, Redis utilizes a custom protocol (RESP) via a TCP connection. This connection can be completely open/unauthenticated, which means anyone with access to the Redis instance has unfettered access to the entire data set. On the other hand, Momento Cache offers APIs as a core feature because API-centric development is familiar to developers and secure by default (each API is authenticated and authorized separately). Also, with the API abstraction layer, you don’t have to worry about managing instances, autoscaling, or dealing with configuring Redis in cluster mode. The Momento Cache APIs scale instantly to meet the changing demands of your application.

No maintenance windows

With self-managed or hosted Redis, maintenance windows are inevitable as the Redis instances go through regular software updates and patches. These maintenance windows, even when brief, can cause downtime and disruption to your application. With Momento Cache, there is zero downtime. All software updates, patches, and deployments happen seamlessly without your application going through any hiccups at all. We abstract away the complexities of managing individual instance upgrades to ensure our APIs are always available.

Handcrafted client libraries and SDKs

Redis is wildly popular as an open-source storage engine, and there are many equally popular open-source Redis clients. While we also love open-source projects here at Momento, we believe in delivering a consistent, predictable end-to-end experience to developers, including handcrafting our own client libraries that work seamlessly with Momento Cache. We build in best practices like automated connection pool management, pre-built static configs, as well as out-of-the-box instrumentation. This means you can count on us to continuously test and improve our client libraries, so you can depend on Momento Cache to handle critical operational aspects of your infrastructure, leaving you time to focus on your core business logic.

In summary, while Redis is a renowned storage solution, Momento Cache offers an all-encompassing service that goes beyond just raw storage. With its serverless capabilities, Momento Cache provides developers with a hassle-free and efficient data solution.

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Daniela Miao

Author

Daniela Miao is the Co-Founder of Momento, where she’s humbled everyday by her awesome teammates! Previously, she led Platform Engineering at Lightstep, where she launched their new Metrics Product. She was also tech lead at AWS DynamoDB, and released cross-region replication. Daniela has spoken at many events including re:Invent, QCon, and Kubecon. At Momento, she works on distributed system performance, observability, security, and the intersection of engineering with business.