ElastiCache is a handy AWS tool that’s become quite popular. We have prepared this detailed guide outlining everything about What is ElastiCache In AWS and its uses.
AWS ElasticCache was released in 2011, and it soon became a popular Amazon service for various reasons. While many developers prefer AWS Elasticache, some believe it is too pricey for the cost.
However, Amazon Elasticache continues to grow in popularity despite the growing competition in the cloud caching market.
What is ElastiCache in AWS?
ElastiCache is a service offered by Amazon Web Services that enables users to easily set up, organize and scale distributed in-memory data or caches in the cloud.
The platform offers a high-speed, scalable, and value-driving caching solution.
You can use Amazon ElastiCache to upscale the performance of your web apps by using the platform’s in-memory caches instead of using slow and outdated disk-based databases.
What Are The Use Cases Of AWS ElastiCache?
AWS ElastiCasche is primarily used for caching, which helps improve the speed and functionality of applications and database management, and more.
Some prominent AWS ElastiCache use cases are shared below:
- Gaming leaderboard management and updates.
- Providing real-time consumer analytics on e-commerce platforms.
- Keeping track of customer account status on subscription-based platforms.
- Updating and processing real-time messages on messenger platforms.
- Online video and audio streaming.
- Helps with geospatial processing.
What Is ElastiCache In Redis and Memcache?
Amazon ElastiCache supports the Redis and Memcached cache engines.
Redis is a famous open-source in-memory data structure store that provides database management, caches, and message broker services.
Memcache is a similar distributed memory caching system.
What Differentiates ElastiCache From Elasticsearch?
Amazon ElastiCache falls under the ‘Managed Memcache‘ group, whereas Elasticsearch, on the other hand, is considered a ‘Search as a Service.’
What Are The Primary Features Offered By Amazon ElastiCache?
Three primary features of Amazon ElastiCache are:
- It is compatible with the Redis cache engine.
- It is compatible with the Memcached engine.
- AWS Management Console makes it easy to use and manage.
Who can use Amazon ElastiCache?
Amazon ElastiCache is available globally, so anyone eligible for Amazon Web Services can use this service.
AWS elasticache redis example?
As we can see, the Elasticache can be used for caching data, Realtime Analytica, AI/ML as well as storing Session information.
Why should you use Amazon ElastiCache; explain with pros and cons?
Amazon ElastiCache service has its advantages and disadvantages; here is what they are:
Pros Of Using Amazon ElastiCache Are As Follows:
- AWS ElastiCache is compatible with Redis and Memcached cloud systems.
- AWS ElastiCache provides real-time updates.
- AWS ElastiCache can be easily managed via AWS Management Console.
- AWS ElastiCache is high-speed and efficient.
- AWS ElastiCache offers flexible pricing, giving you the option to pay only for what you need.
- AWS ElastiCache supports data configuration.
- AWS ElastiCache uses login credentials to provide data security.
- AWS ElastiCache requires permission to access application data.
Cons of Using Amazon ElastiCache Are As Follows:
- AWS ElastiCache is expensive and not easily affordable by everyone.
- You cannot limit the Client from accessing data stores via the AWS console.
- AWS infrastructure can be time-consuming.
- Most of the time, cache data is stored in the primary data store instead of the secondary.
- Default TTL is infinity.
Is AWS ElastiCache Fast-Paced?
Yes, AWS ElastiCache works at a lightning-fast pace. You can expect simple reading and writing operations to take less than a millisecond.
Moreover, AWS ElastiCache can carry out millions of operations in a second within a cluster. When it comes to end-to-end hardware and software stack, AWS ElastiCache outperforms others in this area as well.
Can You Call AWS ElastiCache Persistent?
Typically, the data stored on ElastiCache in the Redis node is by default stored in the memory and cannot be called persistent.
If you reboot the node or there are any hardware failures, your cache data is gone. If you wish to have more data reliability, you can use the Redis append-only file feature (AOF).
Who Are The Most Common Users Of Amazon ElastiCache?
Amazon ElastiCache is most commonly used by the following:
- Freelance Developers
- Small Businesses
- Startups
- Medium-sized Businesses
- Large-scale business Organizations
Which Language Is Offered By AWS ElastiCache?
AWS ElastiCache is available in English all across the globe.
Which Applications Are Compatible With AWS ElastiCache?
AWS ElastiCache can be integrated with various applications, including Amazon RDS and Amazon EC2.
What Support Options Are Available For AWS ElastiCache?
AWS ElastiCache offers the following:
- Chat
- Knowledge Base
- FAQs/Forum
- Email/Help Desk
What Are The Steps Taken For Using AWS ElastiCache?
- The first step is to sign up for the AWS Management console. Once this is done, open up the Amazone ElastiCache console using the following link. https://console.aws.amazon.com/elasticache/
- After opening the Amazone ElastiCache console, look at the right upper corner of the screen for an option that lists down different regions AWS is operational.
- Now choose the region where you need to launch your cluster in.
- Then move to the navigation pane and select Redis for testing the connection.
- Lastly, click on create and make sure to select Redis for Cluster engine.
How To Gain Access To ElastiCache?
The steps to gain access to ElastiCache are almost the same as setting it up for the first time. You need to sign in to your AWS Management console so that you can open up the ElastiCache console.
Once this is done, look at the left navigation pane and select Memcached. This will list down all the clusters that run the Memcached engine.
Is It Possible For AWS ElastiCache To Be Distributed?
Amazon ElastiCache allows everyone to incorporate caching logic into their application efficiently. A cache cluster is a distributed cache.
It is also an in-memory cache that can be easily accessed through the Memcached protocol. Each cache cluster created for an application consists of two or more Cache Nodes.
Can ElastiCache Be Stopped?
It is not possible to stop an already set up and running ElastiCache. However, you can delete an ElastiCache and recreate another.
How Can One SSH Into ElastiCache?
You can access ElastiCache outside of the AWS Management console through the following method. This route to access ElastiCache can be done using the following steps.
Start by creating a NAT instance. Make sure to create this NAT instance using the same VPC as the cache cluster. However, this is must all be done in a public subnet.
You will then need to make some security rules for the group applicable to both the cache cluster and NAT instance.
The next step is to ensure the validity of the security rules. Lastly, add an additional rule of iptables to the NAT instance.
Explain How ElastiCache Works With RDS?
Amazon ElastiCache is an excellent caching server that allows you to set up in-memory data stores.
You can also run various open-source and compatible data stores in the cloud using the ElastiCache feature.
It works by letting you retrieve all kinds of data, including both low latency as well as high latency.
This ensures that you can build a data-intensive app easily. In addition to all this, the nature of its scalable architecture can help you upgrade the performance of existing databases’.
Is ElastiCache A Key-Value Store?
ElastiCache can be compared to an ASP.NET Session Store on Windows.
ElastiCache is a caching server that boosts the server performance of an application and offers a great source of an in-memory key-value store.
Amongst these key-value stores are also stores for items pertaining to small data, for example, strings.
How Is The Testing For AWS ElastiCache Done?
In order to test a connection between different types of clusters, the Redis-CLI utility is used. These clusters include both modes disabled, and mode enabled Redis-CLI clusters.
For clusters that enable Encryption/Authentification, the latest versions of Redis-CLI can be used for setting up connections. This is possible as the latest version of Redis-client supports SSL/TLS.
Can ElastiCache Be Public?
It is not possible to access ElastiCache other than through VPC. If an ElastiCache cluster is opened to 0.0. 0.0/0, ensures that there is no exposure to the internet as the IP address used is not public.
Is ElastiCache Scalable?
Yes, the Amazon ElastiCache server falls under the category of automatically scalable servers. This feature makes it very cost-efficient as well.
Autoscaling ensures that the capacity is adjusted continuously to accommodate a steady performance rate at the most acceptable prices.
Shards of replica nodes can be incorporated or omitted from the clusters horizontally to enable the autoscaling feature.
What Are The Steps Taken To Scale ElastiCache?
ElastiCache is scalable, and there are very simple steps to do it. Once you have signed in to AWS Management Console, go to the cache cluster console.
Select Redis from the navigation pane. A list of clusters will appear. Choose the one that needs to be scaled up.
Click on modify when the Modify Cluster Wizard appears. You can then click on apply immediately box to execute the scale-up process.
What Is The Pricing Of Amazon ElastiCache?
Even though Amazon ElastiCache is typically considered expensive, they offer a flexible pricing system.
According to this pricing model, you only have to pay for how much you use. The billing offers a spiked-up service cost as you increase or scale up your usage.
There is no standard pricing offered for AWS ElastiCache; however, there is a FREE trial version you can use.
In addition to this, AWS ElastiCache offers some hourly and monthly price plans that vary depending on the type of node you are using. For more pricing information, check out this link.
elasticache vs elasticsearch
Both are used for faster data retrieval, so let us find out how they are different.
| Elasticache | Elasticsearch |
| The interface supports Redis and Memcached API engines | The interface supports the Elasticsearch API engine, supports RESTful API |
| Use to improve application and DB performance. | Use for storing and searching data for creating realtime or near realtime dashboard. |
| Meant for Key-value search types | Document search engine. |
elasticache vs redis
Elasticache supports two types of caching Redis and Memcached.
So to say Redis is a kind of Elasticache, no point in comparing them.
what is elasticache cluster?
A cluster that consists of nodes is the backbone of any cache engine.
In short, Elasticache Cluster is a collection of nodes that hold data. You have the flexibility to choose the number of nodes you would like to have in the Elasticache Cluster.
elasticache vs dynamodb
| Elasticache | DynamoDB |
| This is an in-memory cache | This is a no-SQL database. |
| Supports various node types depending on the requirement of speed | Uses SSD drives for high performance and low latency |
| Cost depends on number of nodes and data processed | Cost depends on the on-demand capacity or provisioned capacity. |
| Supports multi-AZ deployment of nodes | Spreads the data for better performance by default |
| Used for providing a cashing solution for RDS for faster reads | Use for no-SQL or key-value data |
FAQS:
Q: AWS elasticache documentation?
We have given the data which contains the latest information regarding Elasticache. For more documentation, you can refer to the AWS documentation.
Conclusion
After reading this guide, we hope that you will now be well-equipped with all the necessary information on ElastiCache and how to use it.
Hopefully, this information will allow you to consider all the pros and cons of ElastiCache before opting for this feature in AWS. Good luck!
I am an Amazon Web Services Professional, having more than 11 years of experience in AWS and other technologies. Extensively working in various AWS tools like S3, Lambda, API, Kinesis, Load Balancers, EKS, ECS, and many more. Working as a Solution Architect and Technology Lead for Architecting and implementing the same for different clients. He provides expert solutions around the world and especially in countries like the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Check out the complete profile on About us.
