Difference Between Redis and Aerospike (With Table)

Redis, developed by Salvatore Sanfilippo, stands for remote dictionary server. It is an in-memory, fast, open-source, NoSQL database that is used for databases, cache, and message broker purposes. It stores data on a disk or the RAM. The server-side script used in it is Lua, and it supports a wide range of data structures.

Aerospike, developed by Aerospike, is a flash-optimized, in-memory, open-source, key-value NoSQL database. It supports a vast range of data schemas and has the ACID property. Its architecture mainly consists of three different layers, which are the client layer, clustering, and data distribution layer, and lastly, a data storage layer. It is originally designed in a way to use for large datasets.

Comparison Table Between Redis and Aerospike

What is Redis?

Redis, as discussed above, has a BSD licensed in-memory NoSQL database, which is very fast and used as a database, cache and message broker, and queue. It was released in the year 2009. It is written in C language and is persistent. It can be operated on any system having Windows, OS X, Linux, or BSD operating systems.

The official website of Redis is redis.io. The data is by default stored in the memory. Due to the high resemblance of its data structures with the programming language native data structures, which the programmers use inside applications, it is easy to use. It is also called a data structure server because the core data types of this database are very similar to that of programming language.

User is provided with a randomly generated password to their database when they create a Redis database. Redis has a Master-Slave architecture, and thus, the server can be run in two modes one is the Master mode, and the other is the Slave mode.

The user can configure in which mode they want to read and write from. In the new version of Redis, which is Redis 5.0, a new data structure has been introduced that is Streams alongside a new set of commands for sorted sets and new capabilities for Module APIs.

What is Aerospike?

Aerospike, as discussed above, is a flash-optimized, in-memory, open-source, key-value NoSQL database that was released in the year 2012 and developed by Aerospace. It is written in C and supports the ACID property. It can only be used on the Linux operating system. It supports a wide range of programming languages. It has a three-layer architecture which is a client layer, clustering, and data distribution layer, and lastly, a data storage layer.

The client layer consists of the open-source client libraries that are used to track cluster configuration, and it also manages the communication system between the client and the cluster nodes. Next is the clustering and data distribution layer, which helps in the replication procedure of data across different nodes to maintain the ACID property. This, in return, helps the database to stay operational even if there is some problem in the server nodes.

Lastly comes the third layer, which is the data storage layer. This layer manages the storage of data in SSD and Flash. It is designed for the purpose of storing large datasets as it is persistent and fast. It provides hundreds of thousands of operations per second which outshines the speed. It automatically uses the process of sharding to splitting installations across various servers to run all on the same instance, and thus, it provides linear scalability. Aerospike is known to be a clever Self-healer as it gets back up while still running faster to maintain other node’s performance in the cluster.

Main Differences Between Redis and Aerospike

1. Redis is an in-memory key-value data structure store for the usage of the database, cache, and message broker and queue, whereas Aerospike is an open-source, flash-optimized, distributed key-value in-memory NoSQL database which has ACID properties and supports various data schemas.
2. Redis can be used on Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD systems, whereas on the other hand, Aerospike is solely made to be used on Linux operating systems only.
3. Redis has a very simple password-based user concept, which in other words means that password-based authentication is the basic requirement, and on the other hand, Aerospike requires roles and access rights for users.
4. Redis was originally developed by Salvatore Sanfilippo while he was trying to enhance his Italian startup, whereas Aerospike was developed by Aerospike.
5. Redis has a master-slave-based architecture which means that it can be run in two modes, master mode, and slave mode. The replication method used in Redis is master-slave replication, whereas, in aerospace, there is a selectable replication factor available.

Conclusion

The option for NoSQL databases available out there are vast in number but to pick one among them is a difficult task as each one of them has different advantages for a certain set of situations. To pick one between the two, the individual should analyze several factors like their aims and goals to be achieved, the reason for using, type of need, and such other factors.

Both the databases have high-speed performance. If the individual needs to store a large amount of data, such as for a big retail e-commerce platform, then they should go with the Aerospike; otherwise, if the individual needs to store a relatively small amount of data, then they should pick Redis for that purpose.

References

1. https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.1997-3218
2. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19980046640
3. https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.1999-2761