Redis Interview Questions and Answers for experienced
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What is Redis and what are its key features?
- Answer: Redis is an in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache, and message broker. Key features include its speed (in-memory operation), support for various data structures (strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes), persistence options (RDB, AOF), and client libraries for many languages.
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Explain the difference between Redis and Memcached.
- Answer: While both are in-memory data stores, Redis offers richer data structures (beyond simple key-value pairs), persistence, transactions, and pub/sub capabilities. Memcached is simpler and primarily focuses on caching.
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What are the different data structures supported by Redis?
- Answer: Strings, Hashes, Lists, Sets, Sorted Sets, Bitmaps, HyperLogLogs, Geospatial Indexes, Streams.
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Explain the concept of Redis persistence. What are the different persistence methods?
- Answer: Redis persistence ensures data is saved to disk to prevent data loss. Methods include RDB (snapshotting) and AOF (append-only file) which log every write operation. Choosing between them depends on data loss tolerance and performance requirements.
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How does Redis handle data eviction when memory is full?
- Answer: Redis uses various eviction policies (like `maxmemory-policy`) to remove data when memory is full. Options include `noeviction`, `allkeys-lru`, `allkeys-random`, `volatile-lru`, `volatile-random`, `volatile-ttl`, and `allkeys-lfu`. The choice depends on the application's needs.
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What are Redis transactions? How do they work?
- Answer: Redis transactions group multiple commands into a single unit of work. They guarantee that either all commands are executed or none are, ensuring atomicity. They use `MULTI`, `EXEC`, `DISCARD`, and `WATCH` commands.
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Explain Redis Pub/Sub. Give an example use case.
- Answer: Redis Pub/Sub allows for real-time communication between different clients. Publishers send messages to channels, and subscribers listen to these channels. Use cases include real-time dashboards, chat applications, and distributed systems coordination.
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What are Redis clusters? How do they work?
- Answer: Redis clusters distribute data across multiple Redis instances for scalability and high availability. They use hashing to distribute keys across nodes and provide automatic failover.
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Describe Redis Sentinel. What is its purpose?
- Answer: Redis Sentinel monitors a Redis master and its slaves. It provides high availability by automatically promoting a slave to master if the master fails.
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How do you optimize Redis performance?
- Answer: Performance optimization involves using appropriate data structures, choosing the right eviction policy, optimizing client-side code, using connection pooling, and configuring Redis appropriately for your workload (e.g., using pipelines).
Explain the concept of Redis slow logs. How can they help in debugging?
- Answer: Redis slow logs record commands that take longer than a specified threshold. Analyzing these logs helps identify performance bottlenecks and optimize queries.
How can you monitor Redis performance? What tools can you use?
- Answer: Redis provides built-in commands (`INFO`, `MONITOR`, `SLOWLOG`) for monitoring. External tools like Grafana, Prometheus, and Datadog can also be used for comprehensive monitoring.
What are the different ways to connect to Redis?
- Answer: Redis clients are available for various programming languages, including Python, Java, Node.js, PHP, Ruby, etc. These clients provide functions to connect to the Redis server and execute commands.
Explain the concept of Redis modules. Give examples of useful modules.
- Answer: Redis modules extend Redis functionality by adding new data structures, commands, and functionalities. Examples include RedisJSON, RediSearch, and RedisGraph.
Describe a scenario where you would choose Redis over a traditional relational database.
- Answer: Redis is a better choice for applications requiring high speed, real-time data access, in-memory caching, and session management, where data consistency is not paramount and data is simpler.
What are the security considerations when using Redis?
- Answer: Securing Redis involves configuring authentication (passwords), enabling TLS encryption, using firewall rules to restrict access, and regularly updating Redis to patch vulnerabilities.
Explain how Redis handles keys with the same name in different namespaces.
- Answer: Redis namespaces are implemented using prefixes in keys. Keys with the same name but different prefixes are treated as distinct keys.
How can you efficiently retrieve multiple values from Redis?
- Answer: Using the `MGET` command allows for efficient retrieval of multiple values corresponding to multiple keys in a single request.
Describe the difference between `LRANGE` and `LPOS` commands in Redis lists.
- Answer: `LRANGE` returns a range of elements from a list, while `LPOS` finds the index of a specific element within a list. `LPOS` is more efficient for searching.
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