How Redis Cluster Works Internally — A Deep Dive

Table of contents Introduction High-level overview: goals and building blocks Key distribution: hash slots and key hashing Cluster topology and the cluster bus Replication, failover and election protocol Client interaction: redirects and MOVED/ASK Rebalancing and resharding Failure detection and split-brain avoidance Performance and consistency trade-offs Practical tips for operating Redis Cluster Conclusion Resources Introduction Redis Cluster is Redis’s native distributed mode that provides horizontal scaling and high availability by partitioning the keyspace across multiple nodes and using master–replica groups for fault tolerance[1]. This article explains the cluster’s internal design and runtime behavior so you can understand how keys are routed, how nodes coordinate, how failover works, and what trade-offs Redis Cluster makes compared to single-node Redis[1][2]. ...

December 12, 2025 · 7 min · 1382 words · martinuke0
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