Redis Data Integration vs ElastiCache: Keep data fresh without pipelines

Keep data fresh without pipelines using Redis Data Integration (RDI)

When comparing Redis vs. ElastiCache, one difference is how each handles data freshness. RDI streams changes in real time, while ElastiCache depends on manual ETL pipelines. ElastiCache has no equivalent to RDI’s automatic rehydration from your system of record.

In a world obsessed with speed and performance, data is only as powerful as its immediacy. Yet, many organizations still rely on cumbersome ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipelines to move data into caching systems like Amazon ElastiCache. These pipelines are complex, brittle, and often lag behind the pace of business. Redis Data Integration (RDI) rewrites that paradigm entirely with change data capture (CDC).

RDI transforms how teams bridge data systems and Redis. With CDC, real-time streaming, and a no-code YAML configuration, RDI eliminates latency, fragility, and manual maintenance. Not only is RDI faster, it’s smarter too.

Redis vs. ElastiCache: Cache misses cost you more than time

Most teams using ElastiCache rely on a cache-aside pattern. It’s simple: the app checks Redis for data, and if it isn’t there, it fetches it from the source, processes it, and writes it back. It’s easy to implement, but there are inherent limitations.

1. Cache misses mean higher latency. Every miss forces a round-trip to the database, slowing responses and introducing unpredictable performance. This also often happens at the worst possible times - when data is first loaded, when memory runs hot, or when a key expires after its time-to-live (TTL) runs out. For user-facing systems, those spikes show up as lag, timeouts, or inconsistent behavior between sessions.
2. Stale data is the other side of the coin. When the cache and source drift apart, users see outdated information or make updates on invalid data. Engineers end up building ETL or custom refresh jobs just to keep things “mostly” up to date.

That’s a lot of moving parts to solve a simple problem: keeping data fresh.

Redis Data Integration changes this. Instead of waiting for cache misses or scheduling refresh jobs, RDI continuously streams updates from the system of record straight into Redis. The result is a cache that’s always hot, always current, and never waiting for a pipeline to catch up.

Redis vs ElastiCache: Why pipelines slow you down

ElastiCache users rely on traditional ETL pipelines. They have long been the backbone of data movement. It’s ubiquitous in the data world: batch operations, apply transformations, and load it all into another format for easy access. But when milliseconds count, this model quickly shows its age. Redis Data Integration eliminates those delays by streaming real-time updates directly from your source systems.

• Latency and data drift: ETL jobs typically run on schedules: every few seconds, minutes, hours, or even nightly. That means caches can quickly become stale, undermining real-time application accuracy and performance. During periods of peak volume and frequent writes, this could mean customers or stakeholders are making decisions off of stale data, or worse, modifying and reading data that is invalid entirely.
• Operational overhead: Managing ETL tools or custom scripts requires constant upkeep and manual intervention. It also involves writing code and engineering effort to handle exceptions and perform cache refreshes, not to mention the nightmare of a disruption or outage.
• Scalability limits: As data volume and sources grow, ETL pipelines become fragile and slow to evolve. Adding a new data source or table often means days of engineering work.

With ElastiCache, these limitations are amplified. Elasticache is meant to act as a high-speed datastore, yet it relies on slow-moving and outdated data ingestion layers. Redis Data Integration for Redis Cloud acts as a no-code all-in-one streaming pipeline that puts all of these shortcomings in the past.

Real-time data streaming: From source to cache in milliseconds

RDI keeps your cache aligned with real-time data, ensuring applications always read the latest state without waiting for batch updates. At the heart of RDI is real-time data streaming. Instead of batch-based transfers, RDI continuously streams updates from databases or data warehouses directly into Redis.

• Always fresh data: Every change in your operational database is instantly reflected in Redis with no polling or delays. Applications consuming Redis always see the most up-to-date state.
• High-throughput, low-latency: Built on a streaming-first architecture, RDI can handle thousands of updates per second without performance degradation.
• Seamless integration: Whether your data lives in PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, MongoDB, or Snowflake, RDI connects natively and streams updates directly to your Redis database.

In short, Redis Data Integration turns your cache into a real-time mirror of your persistent data layer without any extra code.

Change Data Capture: Redis real-time sync without the hassle

Traditional ETL pipelines don’t know what’s changed, they just reprocess everything. RDI takes a more intelligent approach using Change Data Capture (CDC).

• Event-driven updates: RDI listens to database change logs, capturing inserts, updates, and deletes as they happen.
• Minimal load on source systems: Because CDC works off of transaction logs, it avoids the heavy queries that batch jobs require.
• Automatic conflict resolution: RDI manages consistency between source and Redis, ensuring accurate reflection of current data even during high churn.

With CDC, Redis becomes a live extension of your data infrastructure, capturing the dynamic updates without the static overhead.

No-code YAML configuration: From hours to minutes

ETL pipelines often require scripting, orchestration, and versioning across multiple tools. RDI simplifies the entire process with a no-code, declarative YAML configuration.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

That’s it. With a few lines of YAML, RDI can continuously transform and sync any Postgres table to Redis hashes or JSON. No transformation scripts, no cron jobs, no operational headaches.

This approach drastically reduces the engineering effort required to maintain data pipelines, freeing teams to focus on building real-time features instead of maintaining over-engineered data flows.

Redis Data Integration in action: Modernizing the data stack

With RDI, Redis is no longer “just a cache”. Instead, it’s a cohesive, dynamic real-time data platform that can better deliver performance and reliability to your applications.

• For devs: No more manual cache refreshing. Redis data is always synchronized with the source of truth.
• For data engineers: No need to maintain a fleet of connectors for Redis in separate services like Amazon Kinesis or Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK). RDI handles orchestration and resiliency automatically.
• For architects and application owners: Deliver instant personalization, real-time analytics and inventory, and consistent customer experiences, all powered by live data.

Axis Bank, India’s 3rd largest private sector bank, experienced challenges with their mobile application development. With RDI, Axis instantly captures and processes real-time changes in data from nine large traditional SQL tables and performs advanced queries using the Redis Query Engine. This innovative approach yields a 4.25x faster response time compared to retrieving data directly from their core banking tables, a huge improvement in system performance and overall efficiency. Read their full story →

Traditional ETL cache pipelines were built for a slower era of data. When considering Redis vs. ElastiCache, the gap is clear: only Redis Data Integration delivers real-time data that’s always in sync, without pipelines or delay. With real-time updates through CDC, simple YAML configuration, and native Redis performance, RDI turns what used to be a data engineering burden into a competitive advantage. RDI unifies real-time data movement with Redis’s ultra-fast sub-millisecond performance, enabling data-driven applications to truly operate at the speed of dataflow.

In a world where milliseconds matter, Redis Data Integration ensures your data, business, and customers are always ahead of the competition.

To learn more and get started, check out our RDI docs. For a deeper comparison of Redis Cloud and ElastiCache, follow our blog for other topics, such as high availability, resource efficiency, and costs.