Redis 8.0 GA: New Features, Data Structures, Performance Boosts, and Return to Open Source

Return to Open Source

In March 2024 Redis switched its license back to open source by adding the OSI‑approved AGPLv3 alongside the existing RSALv2/SSPLv1, and renamed its free product to “Redis Open Source” to emphasize the change.

New Data Structures

Vector Set (Beta) : a data structure designed for AI applications to store and query high‑dimensional vector embeddings, enhancing similarity and semantic search capabilities.

Native JSON support : allows storing and manipulating JSON documents directly in Redis with JSONPath‑based commands.

Five probabilistic data structures added on top of HyperLogLog: Bloom filter & Cuckoo filter, Count‑min sketch, Top‑k, and t‑digest, providing memory‑efficient approximations for membership, frequency, heavy hitters, and quantile estimation.

Redis Query Engine Enhancements

Secondary indexes can now be created on Hash and JSON types, enabling exact match, range, full‑text (with stemming, synonyms, fuzzy matching), and vector similarity searches.

Performance Improvements

More than 30 optimizations reduce latency of up to 90 commands by 5.4%‑87.4% compared with 7.2.5. I/O thread configuration ( io-threads ) can increase throughput by up to 112% on multi‑core CPUs, and a new replication mechanism speeds up master‑slave synchronization.

Visualization Tools

Redis Insight and the Redis for VS Code extension fully support Redis 8.0, with Redis Insight integrating the AI‑powered Redis Copilot for natural‑language assistance.

Conclusion

Redis 8.0 is a milestone release that re‑embraces open source under AGPLv3 and introduces many practical features and performance gains. More details are available at the official blog link.