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Radix — drop-in Redis replacement on a shard-per-core database

Picodata Radix speaks the Redis wire protocol. Drop-in for Redis Cluster: clients keep their code; the database takes over scale, durability, and operations.

Download Picodata Radix documentation

Key Radix advantages

  • Drop-in Redis replacement

    Radix speaks RESP2 and the Redis Cluster client protocol. Clients connect with redis-cli, redis-benchmark, and the standard client libraries — no code changes required.

  • Shard-per-core throughput

    Underneath, each Picodata core serves its own independent shard with no contention on shared resources. Linear horizontal scaling on commodity hardware — well past the single-thread ceiling that bounds open-source Redis.

  • Strong consistency option

    Picodata's Raft-replicated WAL gives Radix high availability and zero-data-loss guarantees on top of the Redis API. Run as a cache or as durable storage.

  • Cluster operations

    Add and remove cores or nodes online; the cluster rebalances buckets without downtime. No separate Sentinel infrastructure — failover is built in.

  • Cache or persistent store

    Configure Radix as an in-memory cache or as a persistent key-value store with the same plugin and the same API. Same wire protocol, two operational profiles.

Radix on Picodata

Picodata is an open-source distributed SQL database with PostgreSQL wire compatibility, shard-per-core architecture, and a Rust plugin SDK.

Radix is a commercial plugin from the Picodata team. It proves the model — a wire-compatible Redis layer that runs against the same shared cluster as the SQL core. The SDK is open; the community can build its own wire-compatibility plugins.

What Radix is

Radix is a plugin for Picodata that implements the Redis wire protocol (RESP2) and the Redis Cluster client model. Connect with popular client libraries — redis-cli, ioredis, lettuce, go-redis, and others; the Picodata cluster behaves like Redis Cluster, supporting more than 180 commands and the core data types.

What Radix changes underneath:

  • Automatic horizontal scaling on the Redis Cluster sharding model. Linear throughput growth as cores or nodes are added — verified to operate stably at clusters up to 10 000 cores.
  • Logs operations for observability, audit, and compliance.
  • High availability and fault tolerance built into Picodata — write-ahead log, Raft consensus, replication. No separate Sentinel infrastructure or third-party watchdog needed.
Why Radix is more than Redis

Radix gives you Redis commands and semantics on a database with cluster-wide guarantees. The same security perimeter, role model, audit trails, and consistency contract apply to every key your Redis client touches. Radix is not just wire-compatible — it's a full component of a distributed SQL database.

Where it fits

Radix is a fit wherever the Redis API is required alongside cluster guarantees and operational maturity:

  • Hot-data caches in front of slower databases — with WAL durability, not best-effort eviction;
  • Session stores and rate-limiting counters in high-throughput web applications;
  • Replacement for commercial Redis Enterprise licenses;
  • Consolidating a Redis layer into the same operational footprint as a PostgreSQL-compatible distributed SQL — one cluster, one team.
Who it is for

Radix is aimed at architects, SRE teams, and platform engineers in financial services, telecom, gaming, ad-tech, and consumer-internet — wherever you need Redis on the wire, with HA, WAL, and audit on top.

Architecture and scaling

Radix runs as a plugin inside Picodata cluster nodes. Each node serves its share of keys on a Redis-Cluster-compatible scheme; clients see the same sharding and MOVED redirects. The difference is underneath: each CPU core serves its own shard, with nothing shared. That breaks the Redis single-thread ceiling and lets throughput scale linearly with the cluster.

When Radix is not the right choice

Radix is not a fit if:

  • Only a narrow Redis feature set is needed and a single open-source Redis process is enough;
  • The application code relies on Redis modules (RedisJSON, RediSearch, RedisGears) — Radix does not implement them yet;
  • The workload fits on a single server and there are no fault-tolerance, audit, or scale requirements — at that size the operational investment in Picodata is excessive.

Outside those cases, Radix earns its keep — both technically and on cost.

Quick start

The Picodata documentation site has step-by-step instructions for running Picodata with plugin support and installing and activating Radix. Once installed, connect to Picodata exactly as you would to a regular Redis instance:

redis-cli -p 7379

Core Redis commands are supported: GET, SET, DEL, EXPIRE, HGET, HSET, TTL, SCAN, TYPE, and others.

System requirements

Linux distributions on x86-64. The full list of supported operating systems is on the download page.

What's new in Radix 0.13.0

Version 0.13.0 broadens Redis-protocol coverage and improves cluster-deployment tooling. See the release note for details and the full change list.

Feedback and support

Product questions, pilot requests, and bug reports — open an issue on the Picodata GitLab or write to hello@picodata.io.