Exploring Garnet: Microsoft’s High‑Performance Open‑Source In‑Memory Data Store

Overview

Garnet is Microsoft’s open‑source, high‑performance, in‑memory data storage solution that aims to overcome Redis’s performance limits in certain scenarios while preserving the open‑source model and RESP compatibility.

Architecture

Core Advantages

Compatibility & Ease of Use : Uses the widely adopted RESP protocol, allowing existing Redis clients to connect without changes.

Scalability & Performance : Optimized client connections and batch processing increase throughput while reducing operational costs for large applications.

Low Latency & High Stability : Delivers superior high‑percentile latency, ensuring stability for critical business workloads.

Cross‑Platform & Modern Architecture : Built on the latest .NET stack, runs on Linux and Windows, and leverages the rich .NET ecosystem for extensibility.

Typical Use Cases

Garnet fits any application that currently uses Redis, KeyDB, or Dragonfly for caching, offering higher throughput, lower latency, and reduced sharding overhead. It is also suitable for new services that need a high‑performance cache layer to cut backend storage costs.

API Support

Garnet supports a wide range of Redis‑compatible commands for strings, sets, and objects, as well as cluster‑mode features such as sharding, replication, and dynamic key migration. It also allows RESP transactions, C# server‑side stored procedures, and custom operations on new object types.

Technical Features

The storage layer, Tsavorite, originates from the OSS FASTER project and provides multi‑tier storage (memory, SSD, cloud), non‑blocking checkpoints, persistence, and multi‑key transactions. Garnet also offers TLS, basic access control, and both single‑node and sharded‑replication cluster modes with efficient key migration.

Getting Started

Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/microsoft/garnet.git
cd garnet

Build the Docker Image

docker build -t tinywan/garnet:v1 .

After the build completes, the image size is about 206 MB.

Run the Container

docker run --rm -it -p 3278:3278 tinywan/garnet:v1

Default port: 3278

Connect with a Client

Use any Redis client, for example redis-cli:

redis-cli -p 3278
127.0.0.1:3278> set tinywan "Hi 3278"
OK
127.0.0.1:3278> get tinywan
"Hi 3278"

Check Server Version

Run the info command to view Garnet’s version and runtime details:

127.0.0.1:3278> info
# Server
garnet_version:1.0.1
garnet_mode:standalone
os:Unix 4.15.0.137
processor_count:2
arch_bits:64
...

Other Commands

127.0.0.1:3278> help keys
  KEYS pattern
  summary: Find all keys matching the given pattern
  since: 1.0.0
  group: generic

127.0.0.1:3278> help SADD
  SADD key member [member ...]
  summary: Add one or more members to a set
  since: 1.0.0
  group: set