Valkey

Valkey is a high-performance data structure server and distributed key/value datastore designed for low-latency, real-time workloads such as caching and message queues. It is a fork of Redis OSS created before Redis’ license change, and aims to remain permissively licensed and community governed.

Key Features

• Rich native data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, and HyperLogLogs
• Replication and high availability options, including Sentinel-style monitoring and failover
• Cluster mode for horizontal scaling and sharding
• Extensibility via modules (plugins) to add new commands, data types, and access patterns
• Built-in Lua scripting for server-side logic and atomic workflows
• Optional TLS support for encrypted client and inter-node communication

Use Cases

• Application caching and session storage with low latency
• Real-time counters, leaderboards, rate limiting, and ephemeral state
• Queueing and lightweight messaging patterns for background work

Limitations and Considerations

• Primarily memory-focused workloads; persistence and durability characteristics depend on configuration choices
• Some advanced features (for example RDMA support) may be experimental and platform-limited

Valkey is a strong fit when you need Redis-style commands and data structures with modern operational options like clustering and encryption. It can serve as a drop-in compatible datastore for many Redis OSS deployments while supporting a broad range of real-time patterns.