AWS recently announced the general availability of Amazon ElastiCache Serverless, a new serverless option allowing users to quickly create a cache and instant scale capacity based on application traffic patterns. In addition, the serverless option is compatible with open-source caching solutions Redis and Memcached.
ElastiCache Serverless enables, according to the company, an easy operation of a high-performance cache for demanding workloads without the need for capacity planning or caching expertise. It ensures optimal resource utilization by monitoring application memory, CPU, and network, scaling instantly to adapt to workload access pattern changes. Furthermore, it offers a highly available cache with automatic data replication across multiple Availability Zones, backed by a 99.99% availability SLA.
Channy Yun, a principal developer advocate for AWS, writes:
Customers wanted to get radical simplicity to deploy and operate a cache. ElastiCache Serverless offers a simple endpoint experience abstracting the underlying cluster topology and cache infrastructure. You can reduce application complexity and have more operational excellence without handling reconnects and rediscovering nodes.
Users can leverage the ElastiCache Serverless option through the ElastiCache console and choose Redis caches or Memcached caches. ElastiCache Serverless supports engine versions of Redis 7.1 or higher and Memcached 1.6 or higher. When, for instance, choosing Redis cache, they can choose between two deployment options: either Serverless or Design your own cache to create a node-based cache cluster.
Choosing deployment option and creation method (Source: AWS News Blog)
Once the cache is created, users can manage the cache using AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or AWS SDKs.
A respondent on a Reddit thread commented:
A little expensive, but zero maintenance and scales up/down on its own steam - I can think there are plenty of teams that would feel the extra money spent is better than their engineering time for upkeep.
In addition, another respondent stated:
I'd argue that it's about as "serverless" as most managed services that AWS provides (thinking Redshift, Aurora, or OpenSearch, where you're still paying per GB-hour or "comp-unit/hr" whether or not you're using it) while not as serverless as true pay-for-what-you-use services like Lambda, API Gateway or CloudFront. If you leave the default configurations, you don't have to worry about resource-provisioning, multi-AZ availability, or scaling.
Lastly, Amazon ElastiCache Serverless is currently available in all commercial AWS regions, including China – and pricing details are available on the pricing page.
