In-memory key-value datastores have become indispensable building blocks of modern cloud-native infrastructures, yet their evolution faces scalability, compatibility, and sustainability constraints. The current literature lacks an experimental evaluation of state-of-the-art tools in the domain. This study addressed this timely gap by benchmarking Redis alternatives and systematically evaluating Valkey, KeyDB, and Garnet under realistic workloads within Kubernetes deployments. The results demonstrate clear trade-offs among the benchmarked data systems. Our study presents a comprehensive performance and viability assessment of the emerging in-memory key-value stores. Metrics include throughput, tail latency, CPU and memory efficiency, and migration complexity. We highlight trade-offs between performance, compatibility, and long-term viability, including project maturity, community support, and sustained development.
@article{arxiv.2510.19805,
title = {Next Generation Cloud-native In-Memory Stores: From Redis to Valkey and Beyond},
author = {Carl-Johan Fauvelle Munck af Rosensch"old and Feras M. Awaysheh and Ahmad Awad},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.19805},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
The first author was neither informed nor did he give his consent to the publication of the paper on arXiv. Further, the submission contains multiple major errors in the reported numerical results, and the related conclusions are not supported by the underlying benchmark data. The first author does not stand behind the paper