This article is based on the original announcement published on azure.microsoft.com on May 13, 2020.
Overview
Microsoft and Redis Labs announced a formal partnership in May 2020 to expand the capabilities of Azure Cache for Redis by integrating Redis Labs’ Redis Enterprise technology directly into the Azure platform. The collaboration was described as the first native integration between Redis Labs technology and a major cloud platform.
The partnership was driven by growing enterprise demand for sub-millisecond response times, seamless horizontal scaling, and cloud-native architectural flexibility—requirements that the existing open-source Redis managed service addressed only partially.
What Changed: Two New Enterprise Tiers
The partnership produced two new Enterprise tiers for Azure Cache for Redis, managed natively within Azure. These tiers are powered by Redis Enterprise software licensed through Redis Labs and made available via the Azure Marketplace as an integral part of the provisioning process.
Customers purchasing these tiers get a unified experience: management through the Azure portal and CLI, Microsoft-handled first-line support, standard Azure security and compliance controls, and a single consolidated bill—rather than managing a separate Redis Labs contract alongside their Azure spend.
New Redis Modules Available
A key benefit of the Redis Enterprise integration is access to Redis Labs-developed modules that extend Redis beyond its core data structures. The modules announced as part of this partnership include:
- RediSearch – A full-text search and secondary indexing engine built on top of Redis, enabling rich query capabilities without exporting data to a separate search service.
- RedisBloom – Provides probabilistic data structures such as Bloom filters, Cuckoo filters, Count-Min Sketch, and Top-K, useful for approximate membership queries and frequency estimation at scale.
- RedisTimeSeries – A time-series data structure module with built-in downsampling and aggregation, suited for IoT telemetry, monitoring pipelines, and financial tick data.
These modules open Redis to additional use cases such as real-time analytics, machine learning feature stores, and time-series ingestion pipelines that previously required separate, purpose-built databases.
Enhanced Operational Features
Beyond new modules, the Enterprise tiers layer additional operational capabilities on top of existing Azure Cache for Redis features such as data persistence, clustering, geo-replication, and VNet-based network isolation. The key additions include:
- SSD flash storage option – Enables cache sizes reported to be up to ten times larger than DRAM-only deployments at a lower cost per GB, while targeting comparable performance levels for workloads that tolerate slightly higher latency on cold data.
- Enhanced SLA – The Enterprise tiers carry a stronger availability commitment than the standard open-source Redis tiers.
- Active geo-replication – Allows a globally distributed, active-active cache configuration across Azure regions with no data loss on failover. The announcement also noted a future roadmap item to extend this to hybrid scenarios connecting on-premises caches with Azure-hosted caches.
Developer Experience and Support
From a developer workflow perspective, the Enterprise tiers are designed to require no application-level changes at onboarding. Teams already using Azure Cache for Redis can adopt the new tiers without downtime or changes to their billing management processes.
Microsoft handles first-line support for the integrated offering and works with Redis Labs on escalations that require deep Redis Enterprise expertise. This model means development teams interact with a single vendor for support rather than coordinating between Microsoft and Redis Labs independently.
Why This Partnership Matters for DevOps Teams
For DevOps engineers running workloads on Azure, the practical implications of this partnership are:
- Reduced operational complexity – Redis Enterprise capabilities are provisioned and monitored through the same Azure tooling (portal, ARM templates, Terraform Azure provider, Azure Monitor) used for the rest of the stack.
- Expanded use cases without additional infrastructure – Search, time-series, and probabilistic data structures are available inside the cache layer, potentially eliminating the need for dedicated Elasticsearch or InfluxDB deployments for certain workloads.
- Stronger HA guarantees – Active geo-replication with zero data loss failover is a meaningful upgrade for globally distributed applications with strict RPO requirements.
- Cost flexibility – The flash storage tier offers a different cost-performance trade-off for datasets larger than what DRAM alone would make economically practical.
Background: Azure Cache for Redis
Azure Cache for Redis is Microsoft’s fully managed Redis service, built on open-source Redis. Before this partnership, it covered the primary Redis use cases—distributed caching, session management, pub/sub messaging, and leaderboard data structures—with tiers ranging from Basic (single node) to Premium (clustered, persistent, VNet-isolated). The Enterprise tiers introduced through the Redis Labs partnership sit above the existing Premium tier in capability and are targeted at workloads with stricter performance, resiliency, or feature requirements.
Summary
The Microsoft–Redis Labs partnership represents a meaningful expansion of the Azure Cache for Redis feature set. By bringing Redis Enterprise modules, flash storage, active geo-replication, and enhanced SLAs into a natively managed Azure service, the collaboration lowers the barrier to adopting advanced Redis capabilities in production. Teams already invested in the Azure ecosystem gain access to Redis Labs technology without taking on a separate vendor relationship or operational surface area.