Introduction to the Redis 7.0 release

Redis 7.0 includes several new user-facing features, significant performance optimizations, and many other improvements. It also includes changes that potentially break backwards compatibility with older versions. We urge users to review the release notes carefully before upgrading.

In particular, users should be aware of the following changes:

1. Redis 7 stores AOF as multiple files in a folder; see Multi-Part AOF below.
2. Redis 7 uses a new version 10 format for RDB files, which is incompatible with older versions.
3. Redis 7 converts ziplist encoded keys to listpacks on the fly when loading an older RDB format. Conversion applies to loading a file from disk or replicating from a Redis master and will slightly increase loading time.
4. See sections about breaking changes mentioned below.

Here is a comprehensive list of changes in this release compared to 6.2.6. Each one includes the PR number that added it so that you can get more details at https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/

New Features

• Redis Functions: A new way to extend Redis with server-side scripts (#8693) see https://redis.io/topics/functions-intro
• ACL: Fine-grained key-based permissions and allow users to support multiple sets of command rules with selectors (#9974) see https://redis.io/topics/acl#key-permissions and https://redis.io/topics/acl#selectors.
• Cluster: Sharded (node-specific) Pub/Sub support (#8621) see https://redis.io/topics/pubsub#sharded-pubsub
• First-class handling of sub-commands in most contexts (affecting ACL categories, INFO commandstats, etc.) (#9504, #10147)
• Command metadata and documentation (#10104) see https://redis.io/commands/command-docs, https://redis.io/topics/command-tips
• Command key-specs. A better way for clients to locate key arguments and their read/write purpose (#8324, #10122, #10167) see https://redis.io/topics/key-specs
• Multi-Part AOF mechanism to avoid AOF rewrite overheads (#9788)
• Cluster: Support for hostnames, instead of IP addresses only (#9530)
• Improved management of memory consumed by network buffers, and an option to drop clients when total memory exceeds a limit (#8687)
• Cluster: A mechanism for disconnecting cluster bus connections to prevent uncontrolled buffer growth (#9774)
• AOF: Timestamp annotations and support for point-in-time recovery (#9326)
• Lua: support Function flags in EVAL scripts (#10126) see https://redis.io/topics/eval-intro#eval-flags
• Lua: Support RESP3 reply for Verbatim and Big-Number types (#9202)
• Lua: Get Redis version via redis.REDIS_VERSION, redis.REDIS_VERSION_NUM (#10066)

New user commands or command arguments

• ZMPOP, BZMPOP commands (#9484)
• LMPOP, BLMPOP commands (#9373)
• SINTERCARD, ZINTERCARD commands (#8946, #9425)
• SPUBLISH, SSUBSCRIBE, SUNSUBSCRIBE, PUBSUB SHARDCHANNELS/SHARDNUMSUB (#8621)
• EXPIRETIME and PEXPIRETIME commands (#8474)
• EXPIRE command group supports NX/XX/GT/LT options (#2795)
• SET command supports combining NX and GET flags (#8906)
• BITPOS, BITCOUNT accepts BIT index (#9324)
• EVAL_RO, EVALSHA_RO command variants, to run on read-only replicas (#8820)
• SORT_RO command, to run on read-only replicas (#9299)
• SHUTDOWN arguments: NOW, FORCE, ABORT (#9872)
• FUNCTION *, FCALL, FCALL_RO - https://redis.io/commands/function-load
• CONFIG SET/GET can handle multiple configs atomically, in one call (#9748, #9914)
• QUIT promoted to be a proper command, HOST: and POST demoted (#9798)
• XADD supports auto sequence number via -* (#9217)

New administrative and introspection commands and command arguments

• COMMAND DOCS (#9656, #10056, #10104)
• COMMAND LIST (#9504)
• COMMAND INFO accepts sub-commands as args, and no args too (#9504, #10056)
• LATENCY HISTOGRAM (#9462)
• CLUSTER LINKS (#9774)
• CLUSTER DELSLOTSRANGE and CLUSTER ADDSLOTSRANGE (#9445)
• CLIENT NO-EVICT (#8687)
• ACL DRYRUN (#9974)
• SLOWLOG GET supports passing in -1 to get all entries (#9018)

Command replies that have been extended

• COMMAND and COMMAND INFO extended with tips, key-specs and sub-commands see https://redis.io/commands/command
• ACL CAT, COMMAND LIST list sub-commands (#10127)
• MODULE LIST reply includes path and args (#4848)
• OBJECT ENCODING returns listpack instead of ziplist (#8887, #9366)
• CLUSTER SLOTS hostname support (#9530)
• COMMAND command: Added the blocking and module flags (#10104, #9656)

Potentially Breaking Changes

• Modifying the bind parameter to a non-default value will no longer implicitly disable protected-mode (#9034)
• Remove EVAL script verbatim replication, propagation, and deterministic execution logic (#9812) This has been deprecated and off by default since Redis 6 and is no longer supported.
• ACL: pub/sub channels are blocked by default (acl-pubsub-default=resetchannels) (#10181)
• SCRIPT LOAD and SCRIPT FLUSH are no longer propagated to replicas / AOF (#9812)
• ACL: Declarations of duplicate ACL users in startup files and command line arguments will result in an error, whereas previously the last declaration would overwrite the others. (#9330)
• Replication: TTLs are always replicated as absolute (not relative) millisecond timestamps (#8474)
• Fixes in handling multi-key commands with expired keys on writable replicas (#9572)
• CONFIG SET maxmemory returns before starting eviction (#10019)
• AOF: The new Multi-Part mechanism stores data as a set of multiple files in a designated folder (#9788)
• Remove STRALGO command, preserve LCS a standalone command which only works on keys (#9799)
• Remove gopher protocol support (#9057)
• MODULE and DEBUG commands disabled (protected) by default, for better security (#9920)
• Snapshot-creating and other admin commands in MULTI/EXEC transactions are now rejected (#10015)
• PING is now rejected with -MASTERDOWN when replica-serve-stale-data=no (#9757)
• ACL GETUSER reply now uses ACL syntax for keys and channels (#9974)
• COMMAND reply drops random and sort-for-scripts flags, which are now part of command tips (#10104)
• LPOP/RPOP with count against non-existing list return null array (#10095)
• INFO commandstats now shows the stats per sub-command (#9504)
• ZPOPMIN/ZPOPMAX used to produce wrong replies when count is 0 with non-zset (#9711)
• LPOP/RPOP used to produce wrong replies when count is 0 (#9692)
• CONFIG GET bind now returns the current value in effect, even if the implicit default is in use (#9034)
• CONFIG REWRITE now rewrites the list of modules to load (#4848)
• Config: repl-diskless-sync is now set to yes by default (#10092)
• When shutting down, Redis can optionally wait for replicas to catch up on the replication link (#9872)
• Most CONFIG SET, REWRITE, RESETSTAT commands are now allowed during loading (#9878)
• READONLY and READWRITE commands are now allowed when loading and on stale replicas (#7425)
• Fix ACL category for SELECT, WAIT, ROLE, LASTSAVE, READONLY, READWRITE, ASKING (#9208)
• RESET is now allowed even when on unauthenticated connections (#9798)
• SCRIPT LOAD is now allowed on stale replicas (#10126)

Security improvements

• Sensitive configs and commands blocked (protected) by default (#9920)
• Improve bind and protected-mode config handling (#9034)
• Sentinel: avoid logging auth-pass value (#9652)
• redis-cli: sensitive commands bypass the history file (#8895)

Performance and resource utilization improvements

• Significant memory saving and latency improvements in cluster mode (#9356)
• Significant memory savings in case of many hash or zset keys (#9228)
• Replication backlog and replicas use one global shared replication buffer (#9166)
• Significant reduction of copy-on-write memory overheads (#8974)
• Free unused capacity in the cluster send buffer (#9255)
• Memory efficiency, make full use of client struct memory for reply buffers (#8968)
• Replace ziplist with listpack in Hash, List, Zset (#8887, #9366, #9740)
• Add support for list type to store elements larger than 4GB (#9357)
• Reuse temporary client objects for blocked clients by module (#9940)
• Remove command argument count limit, dynamically grow argv buffer (#9528)
• Optimize list type operations to seek from the nearest end (#9454)
• Improvements in fsync to avoid large writes to disk (#9409)
• BITSET and BITFIELD SET only propagated when the value actually changed (#9403)
• Improve latency when a client is unblocked by module timer (#9593)

Other General Improvements

• Make partial sync possible after master reboot (#8015)
• Always create a base AOF file when redis starts from empty (#10102)
• Replica keep serving data during repl-diskless-load=swapdb for better availability (#9323)

Changes in CLI tools

• redis-cli --json, and -2 options (#9954)
• redis-cli --scan, add sleep interval option (#3751)
• redis-cli --replica optimization, skip RDB generation (#10044)
• redis-cli --functions-rdb, generate RDB with Functions only (#9968)
• redis-cli -X, take an arbitrary arg from stdin, extend --cluster call take -x (#9980)
• redis-benchmark -x takes an argument from stdin (#9130)
• redis-benchmark, Added URI support (#9314)
• redis-cli monitor and pubsub can be aborted with Ctrl+C, keeping the cli alive (#9347)

Platform / toolchain support related improvements

• Upgrade jemalloc 5.2.1 (#9623)
• Fix RSS metrics on NetBSD and OpenBSD (#10116, #10149)
• Check somaxconn system settings on macOS, FreeBSD and OpenBSD (#9972)
• Better fsync on MacOS, improve power failure safety (#9545)

New configuration options

• CONFIG SET/GET can handle multiple configs in one call (#9748, #9914)
• Support glob pattern matching for config include files (#8980)
• appenddirname, folder where multi-part AOF files are stored (#9788)
• shutdown-timeout, default 10 seconds (#9872)
• maxmemory-clients, allows limiting the total memory usage by all clients (#8687)
• cluster-port, can control the bind port of cluster bus (#9389)
• bind-source-addr, configuration argument control IP of outgoing connections (#9142)
• busy-reply-threshold, alias for the old lua-time-limit (#9963)
• repl-diskless-sync-max-replicas, allows faster replication in some cases (#10092)
• latency-tracking, enabled by default, and latency-tracking-info-percentiles (#9462)
• cluster-announce-hostnameand cluster-preferred-endpoint-type (#9530)
• cluster-allow-pubsubshard-when-down (#8621)
• cluster-link-sendbuf-limit (#9774)
• list-max-listpack-, hash-max-listpack-, zset-max-listpack-* as aliases for the old ziplist configs (#8887, #9366, #9740)

INFO fields and introspection changes

• INFO: latencystats section (#9462)
• INFO: total_active_defrag_time and current_active_defrag_time (#9377)
• INFO: total_eviction_exceeded_time and current_eviction_exceeded_time (#9031)
• INFO: evicted_clients (#8687)
• INFO: mem_cluster_links, total_cluster_links_buffer_limit_exceeded (#9774)
• INFO: current_cow_peak (#8974)
• INFO: Remove aof_rewrite_buffer_length (#9788)
• MEMORY STATS: Report slot to keys map size in in cluster mode (#10017)
• INFO MEMORY: changes to separate memory usage of Functions and EVAL (#9780)
• INFO MEMORY: Add mem_total_replication_buffers, change meaning of mem_clients_slaves (#9166)
• CLIENT LIST: tot-mem, multi-mem (#8687)
• CLIENT LIST, INFO: Show RESP version (#9508)
• SENTINEL INFO: tilt_mode_since (#9000)
• LATENCY: Track module-acquire-GIL latency (#9608)

Module API changes

• Add API for replying with RESP3 types (#8521, #9639, #9632)
• Add API for parsing RESP3 replies from RM_Call (#9202)
• Add RM_Call '0' and '3' flags to control RESP version to be used (#9202)
• Add Support for validating ACL explicitly (#9309, #9974)
• Add missing list type functionality APIs (#8439)
• Add API for yielding to Redis events during long busy jobs (#9963)
• Add API for registering other file descriptors to the Redis event loop (#10001)
• Enhance mem_usage/free_effort/unlink/copy and IO callbacks to have key name and DB index (#8999)
• Enhance mem_usage callback to get the requested sample size (#9612)
• RM_GetContextFlags: CTX_FLAGS_ASYNC_LOADING, CTX_FLAGS_RESP3 (#9323, #9202)
• Mark APIs as non-experimental (#9983)
• RM_CreateSubcommand (#9504)
• RM_KeyExists (#9600)
• RM_TrimStringAllocation (#9540)
• RM_LoadDataTypeFromStringEncver (#9537)
• RM_MonotonicMicroseconds (#10101)
• Add ReplAsyncLoad event and deprecate the ReplBackup event (#9323)
• Add RM_SetModuleOptions OPTIONS_HANDLE_REPL_ASYNC_LOAD flag (#9323)

Bug Fixes

• Fix COMMAND GETKEYS on EVAL without keys (#9733)
• Improve MEMORY USAGE with allocator overheads (#9095)
• Unpause clients after manual failover ends instead of waiting for timed (#9676)
• Lua: fix crash on a script call with many arguments, a regression in v6.2.6 (#9809)
• Lua: Use all characters to calculate string hash to prevent hash collisions (#9449)
• Prevent LCS from allocating temp memory over proto-max-bulk-len (#9817)
• Tracking: Make invalidation messages always after command's reply (#9422)
• Cluster: Hide empty replicas from CLUSTER SLOTS responses (#9287)
• CLIENT KILL killed all clients when used with ID of 0 (#9853)
• Fix bugs around lists with list-compress-depth (#9849, #9779)
• Fix one in a blue moon LRU bug in RESTORE, RDB loading, and module API (#9279)
• Reset lazyfreed_objects info field with RESETSTAT, test for stream lazyfree (#8934)
• Fix RDB and list node compression for handling values larger than 4GB (#9776)
• Fix a crash when adding elements larger than 2GB to a Set or Hash (#9916)
• Diskless replication could not count as a change and skip next database SAVE (#9323)
• Fix excessive stream trimming due to an overflow (#10068)
• Safe and organized exit when receiving SIGTERM while loading (#10003)
• Improve EXPIRE TTL overflow detection (#9839)
• Add missed error counting for INFO errorstats (#9646)
• DECRBY LLONG_MIN caused negation overflow (#9577)
• Delay discarding cached master when full synchronization (#9398)
• Fix Stream keyspace notification and persistence triggers in consumer creation and deletion (#9263)
• Fix rank overflow in zset with more than 2B entries (#9249)
• Avoid starting in check-aof / check-rdb / sentinel modes if only the folder name contains that name (#9215, #9176)
• create the log file only after done parsing the entire config file (#6741)
• redis-cli: Fix SCAN sleep interval for --bigkeys, --memkeys, --hotkeys (#9624)
• redis-cli: Fix prompt to show the right DB num and transaction state after RESET (#9096)
• Module API: fix possible propagation bugs in case a module calls CONFIG SET maxmemory outside a command (#10019, #9890)
• Module API: carry through client RESP version to module blocked clients (#9634)
• Module API: release clients blocked on module commands in cluster resharding and down state (#9483)
• Sentinel: Fix availability after master reboot (#9438)
• Sentinel: Fix memory leak with TLS (#9753)
• Sentinel: Fix possible failover due to duplicate zero-port (#9240)
• Sentinel: Fix issues with hostname support (#10146)
• Sentinel: Fix election failures on certain container environments (#10197)

Known Issues

This is a list of known issues that affect this release, and are planned to be fixed or completed before Redis 7 is officially released:

• Module APIs for modules to provide additional command meta-data are still missing.
• Module APIs for supporting the new ACL selectors are still missing.
• ACL key access selectors do not yet apply to SORT with GET/BY does.
• Multi-Part AOF support in redis-check-aof is still missing.