Redy: Remote Dynamic Memory Cache

TL;DR

Redy is a cloud-based remote memory cache system utilizing RDMA that dynamically adapts to resource changes, reduces costs, and enhances performance for data-intensive applications.

Contribution

Redy introduces a novel remote memory cache service that automatically manages resource configuration, handles remote memory dynamics, and integrates with existing key-value stores.

Findings

Redy delivers promised performance and robustness in cloud environments.

Using Redy significantly outperforms SSD spilling when working set exceeds local memory.

Redy reduces cache costs by leveraging stranded memory and spot VMs.

Abstract

Redy is a cloud service that provides high performance caches using RDMA-accessible remote memory. An application can customize the performance of each cache with a service level objective (SLO) for latency and throughput. By using remote memory, it can leverage stranded memory and spot VM instances to reduce the cost of its caches and improve data center resource utilization. Redy automatically customizes the resource configuration for the given SLO, handles the dynamics of remote memory regions, and recovers from failures. The experimental evaluation shows that Redy can deliver its promised performance and robustness under remote memory dynamics in the cloud. We augment a production key-value store, FASTER, with a Redy cache. When the working set exceeds local memory, using Redy is significantly faster than spilling to SSDs.