Valkey
Valkey is Watasu’s managed in-memory data service. It speaks the Redis protocol, so any Redis client library works against it without changes.
Use Valkey for fast, ephemeral state. Use PostgreSQL when the data must be your long-term system of record.
When to reach for Valkey
Section titled “When to reach for Valkey”- caching computed values or query results
- session storage
- rate limiting and throttling
- ephemeral coordination (locks, leader election with TTL)
- queue acceleration
Create
Section titled “Create”watasu addons:create valkey --app my-appPass a plan to pick a tier:
watasu addons:create valkey:premium-0 --app my-apphobby-0 is a non-persistent 25 MiB cache at €1/month. The active Premium plans range from premium-0 (50 MiB, €5/month) to premium-14 (100 GiB, €1,100/month). Every Premium plan includes AOF persistence, one managed HA standby, and automatic failover. The plan numbers are not consecutive; use the catalog table to select a supported size.
Storage backend: Valkey uses network-attached storage for persistence. Premium adds a managed standby and automatic failover. It does not promise three data replicas or local NVMe.
See Add-on Plans for the full catalog.
Connect from your app
Section titled “Connect from your app”After attachment, your app gets:
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
REDIS_URL | Redis-protocol connection URL |
The variable name keeps the Redis prefix on purpose so existing libraries and frameworks “just work.”
Open an interactive session
Section titled “Open an interactive session”watasu valkey:cli --app my-appThe legacy redis:cli alias still works for muscle memory.
Backups
Section titled “Backups”Premium plans support manual and scheduled backups. Hobby 0 is non-persistent and has no backup contract.
Capture
Section titled “Capture”watasu addons:backups:capture my-cachewatasu addons:backups my-cacheRestore
Section titled “Restore”Restores create a replacement add-on, then you promote it. Restore from a managed backup or from a local .rdb file:
watasu addons:restore my-cache ./backup.rdb --name my-cache-restoredwatasu addons:promote my-cache-restoredFor the full restore workflow, see Backups and Restores.
- Treat Valkey contents as expendable unless you’ve explicitly chosen a persistent plan with backups.
- Set TTLs on everything you can — unbounded keyspaces are how Valkey instances run out of memory at the worst possible moment.
- For pub/sub or fan-out patterns at scale, Redpanda is a better fit.