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Recently, the team behind the NoSQL database management system Redis has announced the general availability of Redis 8.4This new version is not a simple incremental update, but rather redefines the engine's capabilities to adapt to the era of Artificial Intelligence, introducing native tools for modern applications and performance optimizations that drastically reduce resource consumption.
Redis 8.4 focuses on three fundamental pillars: the introduction of unified hybrid search, performance improvements through the use of multi-process I/O and more efficient memory management for JSON structures.
Redis 8.4 Key New Features
In this new version of Redis 8.4, one of the most notable new features is the incorporation of the FT.HYBRID commandPreviously, combining vector search with full-text search required complex and fragmented processes; now, Redis 8.4 implements a hybrid search that combines full-text and vector functions in a single queryThis allows developers to obtain results that consider both direct keyword matches and semantic similarity, all without sacrificing accuracy or performance, greatly facilitating the creation of quality contexts for AI systems.
The developers mention that thanks to the new optimizations, The performance of typical caching applications has been improved by 30%. for standard workloads. But where this version truly shines is in systems with a high volume of concurrent queries. By implementing multi-process I/O for distributed queries, Performance increases of up to 4.7 times are observed in search operations and drastic reductions in latency, eliminating the bottlenecks that used to occur in large clusters under stress.
Memory optimization and JSON structures
Resource efficiency has been another point addressed in this new version, as the developers have managed to Memory consumption is significantly reduced when storing small strings in JSON structures.This achieves a 37% savings in arrays with elements up to 7 bytes. Furthermore, the storage of homogeneous numeric arrays has been optimized. Now, the data type is stored only once for the entire array instead of being repeated for each element, resulting in a memory reduction of between 50% and 92%, depending on the numeric data type used.
New atomic commands and migration
To improve data consistency and simplify development, The SET command has been updated with concurrency control options (IFEQ, IFNE), enabling conditional updates without the need for Lua scripts. Similarly, commands such as MSETEX are introduced to configure multiple keys with atomic expiration, and XREADGROUP with options to read idle and pending messages in a single operation, simplifying the logic for stream consumers.
Finally, cluster management receives a critical improvement with the Atomic Slot Migration Mechanism (ASM). Previously, moving data between nodes was a slow and error-prone process during key-by-key transfers. With Redis 8.4, A mechanism has been added that replicates the entire contents of the slot before performing an atomic property transfer., eliminating the problems of constant redirects and inconsistent states during cluster rebalancing.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more, you can consult the details. In the following link.
Redis installation and upgrade
If you want to try these new features, the most recommended way to install Redis on Debian or Ubuntu-based distributions is by using the official package.redis.io repository, as the distributions' default repositories usually contain older versions.
The first thing you should do is Install the prerequisites and add the official Redis GPG key:
sudo apt-get install lsb-release curl gpg curl -fsSL https://packages.redis.io/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/redis-archive-keyring.gpg
Once the key has been added, you must Add the repository to your sources list and update the system:
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/redis-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.redis.io/deb $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/redis.list sudo apt-get update
Finally, para To install the latest available version of Redis, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install redis
For users of Arch Linux, Manjaro or EndeavourOSSince these are rolling release distributions, the package will likely be updated very soon in the official repositories. To install or update it, simply... Open a terminal and run:
sudo pacman -S redis
In the case of FedoraSince it also usually maintains fairly up-to-date packages, you can perform the installation using the DNF manager with the following command:
sudo dnf install redis
If you already had Redis installed from this repository, the previous command will update your instance to version 8.4 while preserving your configuration. To verify that the installation was successful, you can check the version with `redis-server --version`.