Introduction to Redis: Advantages, Installation on CentOS, and First Commands

Redis is an open‑source, in‑memory data‑structure server that can be used as a database, cache, and message broker, supporting strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, and more, with features such as replication, Lua scripting, transactions, and persistence.

Advantages of Redis include high performance due to memory storage (up to 100,000 QPS for small payloads), rich data structures (including geospatial and JSON), simple and powerful APIs, persistence options, and high availability through replication, Sentinel, and clustering.

Installation on CentOS :

Download and extract the Redis source, then compile and install it:

wget https://download.redis.io/releases/redis-6.2.14.tar.gz

tar xzf redis-6.2.14.tar.gz

make

make install

If the make step fails, install GCC and retry:

sudo yum -y install gcc gcc-c++ libstdc++-devel

make MALLOC=libc

After installing the required compiler, rerun make to complete the build.

First Experience with Redis :

Start the server with redis-server and launch the client using redis-cli . Common commands include PING to check the service, SET , GET , and EXISTS for string operations, and INFO to retrieve server statistics.

Conclusion

Redis has become an essential skill for backend developers; understanding its features and installation is crucial for modern development, and further articles will cover persistence, replication, Sentinel, and clustering.