Deprecation Notice: Redis engine for Elasticache

The Redis engine for the aws-elasticache-redis service is being retired on Cloud.​gov, and all service instances will need to move to Valkey, an open-source, drop-in-compatible engine built from the Redis codebase and maintained by the Linux Foundation.

Who is impacted?

If you have an existing Elasticache service instance running the Redis engine, you are impacted, but not immediately. Your instance continues to run Redis today without any action required. However, you will need to upgrade that instance to Valkey by January 15, 2027.

Important dates

When	What
Today	Redis can no longer be chosen when creating a new Elasticache service instance. All new instances default to Valkey.
Today - January 15, 2027	Window for customers to self-upgrade existing Redis instances to Valkey
January 15, 2027	Support for the Redis engine ends. The Cloud.​gov team will reach out directly to coordinate migrating any remaining Redis instances to Valkey.

We strongly encourage upgrading on your own schedule well before the deadline: self-upgrading lets you choose a low-traffic window for your application and confirm everything works as expected afterward. If you haven't upgraded by January 15, 2027, the Cloud.​gov team will reach out to you directly to schedule the migration together, rather than making the change unannounced.

What should you do now?

For existing Redis instances

Upgrading an existing instance from Redis to Valkey is done in place — it does not require creating a new service instance, exporting/importing your data, or rebinding your application.

Before you upgrade: multi-node plans (3-node and 5-node) typically experience only a brief connection interruption during the upgrade, since traffic can fail over to a replica while the primary node is upgraded. Single-node plans (e.g. redis-dev) have no replica to fail over to, so they may experience a longer interruption while the node is replaced. We recommend upgrading during a low-traffic period for your application, and testing the upgrade on a non-production instance first if you have one available.

Run the following command, substituting your service instance name:

cf update-service ${SERVICE_NAME} \
    -c '{"engine": "valkey", "engine_version": "9.1"}'

You can check on the status of the update with:

cf service ${SERVICE_NAME}

Once the update completes, your service instance will be running Valkey 9.1 and your existing bindings and credentials will continue to work without changes.

For new instances

No additional parameters are required — a cf create-service will use Valkey by default:

cf create-service aws-elasticache-redis ${SERVICE_PLAN_NAME} ${SERVICE_NAME}

If you'd like to specify a particular Valkey version at creation time:

cf create-service aws-elasticache-redis \
    ${SERVICE_PLAN_NAME} \
    ${SERVICE_NAME} \
    -c '{"engine_version": "9.1"}'

Why Valkey?

Valkey was forked directly from Redis's own open-source codebase in 2024, after Redis changed its license away from the permissive terms AWS, Cloud.​gov, and many other providers had built on. Valkey is maintained under the Linux Foundation by many of the same engineers who built Redis, and is wire-protocol-compatible with it — your existing clients, libraries, and application code will continue to work against Valkey without changes. It lets us keep offering the same dependable in-memory data store our customers already rely on, under an open-source license we can commit to long-term.

Checking your progress

To see which engine a service instance is currently running:

cf service ${SERVICE_NAME}

See the Elasticache service documentation for more information on available engines and supported versions.

Questions

If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please contact support@cloud.gov.