Independent Cells, Shared Reliability: Building a Redis-First Approach to Active-Active Systems

Building truly active-active distributed systems is often associated with complex consensus protocols, globally distributed databases, or expensive infrastructure. In this talk, we'll explore how we designed and operate an active-active architecture based on independently operating compute cells that continue processing transactions even during failures.

The architecture is powered by our in-house KV Framework—a Redis-first transactional framework that enables each cell to process transactions independently while replica databases provide durability and recovery. This approach minimizes blast radius, simplifies failover, and allows low-latency transaction processing without relying on a globally distributed database.

We'll cover the architectural principles behind the system, including:

1. Designing independently operating cells for fault isolation.

2. Using Redis as the primary transactional datastore.

3. Replication and persistence strategies for durability and recovery.

4. Handling failures, failover, and consistency trade-offs.

5. Operational lessons from running the architecture in production.

1. Understand the architectural principles behind building active-active systems using independently operating cells.

2. Learn how a Redis-first transactional layer can enable low-latency, resilient transaction processing.

3. Understand the consistency, durability, and failure recovery trade-offs in an active-active architecture.