Over the last few months, the Azure Redis Cache team has released a number of enhancements to the service. These enhancements were driven by customer feedback. This post is an outline of the changes released. We hope you will find these improvements helpful.

Public preview of import/export

Import/export is an Azure Redis Cache data management operation which allows you to import data into Azure Redis Cache or export data from Azure Redis Cache by importing and exporting Redis Cache Database (RDB) file(s). This enables you to migrate between different Azure Redis Cache instances or populate the cache with data.

Add dump import to redis cache and Take snapshots of the cache for download were suggestions on the Cache UserVoice feedback forum addressed with this release. For more information on how to use this feature, please see this article.

Public preview of scale to Premium tier

You can now scale your Azure Redis Cache from Standard tier to Premium tier. This is an easy way to migrate to and take advantage of the following benefits of the Premium tier:

• Better performance as compared to Basic or Standard tier
• Redis Persistence to increase resiliency against potential data loss
• Use of Azure Virtual Network to support enhanced security and network isolation
• Redis clustering for more data storing in the cache and added throughput

Configure Redis settings for databases and memory-optimization

You can configure amount of Redis databases and set flags (hash-max-ziplist-entries) to optimize memory. To learn more about Redis memory optimization please see this guide.

Note: Changing these flags to optimize memory may impact performance of your Redis Cache. This requires a good understanding of how Redis works and should be used with caution.

This update addresses the following suggestions on the Cache UserVoice feedback forum.

• Ability to change amount of Redis databases
• Modify Redis hash-max-zipmap-entries and hash-max-zipmap-value for memory optimization

For more information on what properties you can set, check out this article. You can set these properties using Azure Powershell, CLI or Management libraries.

Enable Redis Cache diagnostics through Powershell

We added an option to enable diagnostics through PowerShell. You can use “Set-AzureRmRedisCacheDiagnostics” to enable diagnostics on an existing Redis cache.

New performance counters in Redis metrics

We added Keys (Total/Expired and Evicted) counter. We also added a Redis metrics option which allows you to see all the available counters you can use to monitor your Redis cache.

Azure Redis Cache Advisor

Azure Redis Cache Advisor is a recommendation engine we built as part of our offering. Redis Cache Advisor monitors the health of your Redis Cache and will suggest recommendations if it detects your app’s performance may be impacted. This engine works even if you have not enabled diagnostics for your Cache.

A common symptom for performance being impacted is timeout exceptions in the client's app. These exceptions can happen due for a variety reasons. One example being that based on current usage the Redis Cache could be exceeding recommended thresholds of network bandwidth. This table has more details on the recommended thresholds for network bandwidth.

This work was largely driven by our observation that users were not aware of the impact of exceeding these thresholds on their apps performance.

The following screenshot shows this Redis Cache exceeded the recommended thresholds for all performance counters. For more details, please see this article.

Global region availability

Azure Redis Cache has a broad global reach and is available in all regions in Azure. This includes Azure China and Azure Government. For more details, please visit this service availability document.

Compliance and certifications

Azure Redis Cache has been certified for various compliance standards, most recently, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS). You can find the list of all certifications and attestations Azure Redis Cache has been certified for or the Microsoft Trust Center.

If you are new to Microsoft Azure or Azure Redis Cache, we invite you to try it out by creating your free Azure account and getting started with Azure Redis Cache.

Please provide us feedback through the UserVoice page on how we can improve. If you need help or have questions, visit us on MSDN or StackOverflow.