After Redis switched from a BSD to a closed‑source license in March 2024, the community quickly forked Valkey, which within a year surpassed Redis in throughput, latency, and memory usage, gained support from major cloud providers and Linux distributions, and continues to accelerate while Redis struggles to regain its position.
Valkey 9.1.0 replaces Redis 7.2 with multi‑threaded networking, redesigned hash tables, and AI‑focused features, delivering up to 230% higher throughput, 20%+ memory savings, open BSD‑3‑Clause governance, and seamless compatibility with existing Redis ecosystems for high‑concurrency and AI workloads.
This guide introduces Valkey Glide PHP, the official high‑performance PHP client for the Valkey in‑memory datastore, explains its core Rust‑based architecture, shows three installation methods, highlights key features such as cluster‑aware commands and TLS, and provides ready‑to‑run code examples for single‑node and clustered environments.
Valkey 9.0, the latest community‑driven fork of Redis, introduces multi‑path TCP support, per‑field hash expiration, atomic slot migration, and new safety commands, offering developers enhanced performance, finer‑grained data control, and more reliable cluster operations.
Valkey 8.0 introduces asynchronous IO threads, data prefetch, and memory access amortization (MAA), offloading many tasks from the main thread and dramatically increasing single‑node throughput to up to 1 million requests per second, while also improving memory utilization and overall system efficiency.
Redis 8 has been released under the OSI‑approved AGPLv3 license, reversing its 2024 SSPL shift, and brings up to 87% faster command execution, double the throughput, and integrated modules like JSON, TimeSeries, and the new Vector Sets data type, sparking community debate and competition with Valkey.
Valkey, a Linux Foundation‑backed fork of Redis released under a BSD license, offers faster development, stronger community governance, and new performance and cloud‑native features, positioning it as a compelling alternative for modern workloads.
This guide explains why Redis Labs changed its license, introduces the community‑driven Valkey fork, provides step‑by‑step commands to download, compile, install, configure as a systemd service, test with clients, and benchmark performance against Redis.
The Linux Foundation is backing Valkey, a BSD‑licensed fork of Redis, to preserve an open‑source, community‑driven in‑memory NoSQL database after Redis shifted to stricter RSALv2 and SSPLv1 licenses, drawing support from major cloud providers and sparking debate among industry leaders.
