Elasticache Serverless — ValKey review
Last year, AWS released Elasticache Serverless. This year, AWS introduced Valkey. Is Valkey an improvement to the Elastiache Serverless product and the whole caching portfolio?
Intro
Last year, after AWS released Elasticache Serverless, I wrote a blog post summarizing my opinion. Improvements have been made in the caching space. Let’s review what has changed with the introduction of ValKey into Elasticache.
Pricing On-Demand
An update to ValKey from Redis is one of those no-brainers. With just a small update of CloudFormation, you can save up to 20% on the same amazing service. If you are using Elasticache with Route53, you don’t have to change anything within your app.
I am a big Redis lover and have “some” Elasticache Redis clusters. Last week, I updated my caching clusters, and as promised, I saw a 20% billing drop without any impact on the performance of my systems. Just a few lines changed in CloudFormation. It's just great!
Pricing Serverless
On-demand pricing had a 20% discount, but the Valkey Serverless option offers an even more significant discount of around 33%.
It sounds like a great thing, but that’s not all! We also have a more granular storage unit — 100MB instead of 1GB, like before. This way is more aligned with the “pay-per-use” of Serverless and will also positively affect your billing—especially in dev environments.
Assuming an empty cache ready to use without any traffic previously in eu-west-1 region:
Redis: 720 hours * $0,14 / hour * 1 GB = $100.8
Now with Valkey:
Valkey: 720 hours * $0,094 / hour * (1 GB / 10) = $6.77
This is a game-changer in the space, as the cheapest single node on-demand cluster on cache.t4g.micro will cost 720 hours * $0,0136 = $9,79
Serverless vs. on-demand
The situation is not that profitable when our memory consumption is not minimal. To make this comparison fair, let’s compare a cluster with a node in each AZ to Serverless mode. So, in the spreadsheet below, you can compare the 3-node cluster vs. Serverless pricing.
No configuration is cheaper in serverless mode than on-demand nodes, and the situation will be even worse if we compare it to reserved nodes.
Progress check
Last time, when I was thinking about what could be done better, I wrote such a list:
What could be done better?
- ✅ Fixing minimum $90/month issue or… [now $6]
- ✅ Price based on a more granular storage unit than 1GB [now 100MB]
- Global Support (I guess in the future)
- ✅ It could be cheaper [it is now by 33%]
I believe someone from AWS listened to the community and read my blog post 😂. The evidence is below. Jokes aside, let’s sum it up.
Summary
Improvements coming with Valkey are a no-brainer. It’s great for our wallet and super cheap to implement, and it offers fantastic ROI even for teams with huge technical debt and tight schedules.
Regarding improvements in the Serverless area, I love the direction of the changes. AWS addressed almost all significant issues with last year's release, which shows that they listen to community feedback. However, last year's article's “Summary” section is not outdated. As much as we appreciate having an option, all frugal architects will stick to their Elasticache clusters on reserved nodes.
