About ApsaraDB for Redis solution for gaming industry

Redis, as the most popular key-value database, has been widely used in the gaming industry in recent years. Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB for Redis became commercially available in 2015, providing a full range of database solutions including disaster switchover, failover, online expansion, and performance optimization. It also launched many convenient features tailored to the gaming industry.
Next I will introduce the features of ApsaraDB for Redis targeting the gaming industry.

1. Data persistence to ensure high reliability of data
Traditional database architecture usually adopts relational databases to store data (such as MySQL). The front-end of MySQL utilizes the cache to store frequently-accessed data (such as Redis) to improve the overall system performance.
However, gaming companies sometimes need to develop new products quickly to attract players and seize the market. The cycle from the game plan launch, development to release is usually very short. Developers always hope to have as few database engine options as possible to reduce development complexity and workload.
Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB for Redis adopts hot standby architecture and is capable of data persistence. Data will not be lost when a server fails. ApsaraDB for Redis also provides a recovery-from-backup mechanism, with which you can set the backup policies on a regular basis to enjoy excellent data reliability. In view of the data reliability feature of ApsaraDB for Redis, gaming industry users can choose it as their final data storage layer.
2. Target rolling server opening, and clone instances with one click
Many gaming services are provided in the form of rooms. All the room property data is stored in the database layer. Popular games often require opening servers multiple times in a day, or even in an hour. If you run initialization scripts to load data after creating the database, it will greatly reduce the efficiency of starting the service.
Targeting this feature of the gaming industry, ApsaraDB for Redis has developed a customized one-click instance cloning function. You can directly create a new subscription-type or pay-as-you-go ApsaraDB for Redis instance based on the existing backup file with quite simple operations. (Console path: Backup List > Select Backup Set > Clone Instance)
3. Cope with business peaks, and upgrade configurations in one click
To cope with sudden arrivals of business peaks or operational promotions, the configurations should be upgradeable at any time to handle the peaks at ease.
ApsaraDB for Redis supports one-click upgrading of configurations for elastic capacity expansion on demand. It features high resource utilization and upgrades are transparent to users without any impact to the business.
4. Superb performance to cope with access stress
Games feature fast iterations so when a game is newly launched online, there are usually less considerations about business splitting. Developers will store the cache data of all modules into one Redis database. The single-thread feature of Redis kernel determines that the QPS of a single instance usually cannot surpass 100,000. In the high-speed development period of the game, the Redis performance may suffer a bottleneck with the surging users and increasing popularity of the game. The performance requirement usually stands at hundreds of thousands or even millions of QPS.
ApsaraDB for Redis provides cluster-version instances which can easily break the single-thread bottleneck of Redis. The cluster version adopts instance partitioning and reading algorithms. The whole process is transparent to users, saving their trouble for developing and maintaining Redis clusters. ApsaraDB for Redis cluster version supports a vast majority of Redis commands and can perfectly meet your demands for a high capacity of Redis or high-performance services
The gaming industry may also need Redis of a smaller data volume but a high performance. ApsaraDB for Redis has launched more cluster version configurations recently to meet the diversified client needs. The specific configurations are as follows:
 
5. A high volume of sudden connections, and connections and bandwidth can be adjusted independently
Some games will see the scenario that large quantities of players flood in within a concentrated period of time, after which the access stress will be shunted to multiple business modules layer by layer. So the Redis at the foremost end of the business system undertakes a huge stress, imposing an extremely high requirement on the connection and intranet bandwidth capacities of Redis.
To this end, ApsaraDB for Redis globally tunes up its connection and bandwidth capacities for each specification. It elevates the connections for the primary/standby version to 10,000, and the connections for the cluster version to more than 80,000, and the bandwidth to more than 384MB. In addition, it also adds more specifications for its primary/standby version by making connection and bandwidth quotas commercially available independently to meet diversified demands of clients. The specific configurations are as follows:

6. Outlook of future features in the gaming industry
1) Target rolling server opening, and clone instances with one click
Redis will support opening new instances at any time point in a seven-day period to make the users' service opening and data recovery more targeted.
2）Cope with business peaks, and upgrade configurations in one click
ApsaraDB for Redis plans to enable one-click expansion of a primary/standby version instance to a cluster version instance so that users can easily cope with business peaks.