Boost Application Performance with Alibaba Cloud Tair Redis Cache: A Step‑by‑Step Guide

Introduction

Alibaba Cloud Tair (compatible with Redis®) is a database service that supports standard Redis protocols, suitable for caching and real‑time stream processing. It offers stability, elastic scaling, and high efficiency, making it an ideal solution for reducing response time and improving system performance.

Deployment Preparation

Account Setup

Register an Alibaba Cloud account if you do not have one.

Recharge the account with a balance of at least 100 CNY to enable pay‑as‑you‑go resources.

One‑Click Resource Stack Deployment

Open the ROS console via the provided template link; the system displays the YAML template.

Confirm the region and keep default options, then proceed to the next step.

Configure the stack name, zone, and ECS instance (e.g., compute‑type c6.large) and create the stack.

Wait until the stack status shows "Create Success".

After deployment, call the initialization API to import sample data.

Solution Overview

Cache Validation

Access the API without cache:

http://<ECS_Public_IP>/getAllEmployeesInDepartment?departmentId=1&cacheFirst=false

Access the API with cache enabled:

http://<ECS_Public_IP>/getAllEmployeesInDepartment?departmentId=1&cacheFirst=true

The response includes a message field indicating data was read from the cache.

Verify cached data by logging into the Redis console, selecting the database, and running: GET department:1 Performance Testing with Locust

Create locustfile.py and run Locust to simulate traffic. Test both the non‑cached and cached endpoints, then observe RDS monitoring metrics.

After testing the cached endpoint, repeat the Locust run and check the RDS metrics again.

Analysis

Comparing the monitoring data shows that the non‑cached scenario generates a sharp traffic spike, with execution counts reaching around 700, while the cached scenario remains stable at single‑digit counts, demonstrating that caching effectively alleviates database pressure.

Cache Hit Verification After Data Deletion

Delete records from the database, then access the cached endpoint again:

http://<Public_IP>/getAllEmployeesInDepartment?departmentId=1&cacheFirst=true

The response still shows the message indicating a cache hit.

Resource Cleanup

After the experiment, delete the created ECS instance, VPC, switch, RDS MySQL instance, and Redis instance to avoid further charges.

Learning Outcome

By following this guide, you will learn how to use Alibaba Cloud Tair (Redis) to build a high‑performance cache that accelerates application response and handles high concurrency.