Masters, replicas, broken links and failed saves — see every Redis node in one screen and promote a replica with one click

Redis is the fastest thing in most stacks. It's also the one we tend to set up once and forget about.

And that's exactly how replication breaks: quietly. A replica loses its link to the master and keeps serving stale data. A background save fails and Redis starts refusing writes. Nobody notices until the cache goes cold or an app starts throwing errors.

Ivory now supports Redis, so you can see all of that before your users do.

The problems

  • INFO replication is a wall of text — per node. To understand one master and two replicas, you run it three times and read three walls.
  • "Who's the master right now?" After a manual promotion or two, it's surprisingly easy to lose track.
  • A broken link looks fine from the outside. The replica still answers PING. It's just not getting new data.
  • Persistence failures stop writes. If the last background save or AOF write failed, Redis may refuse writes entirely — and the first you hear of it is an application error.
  • min-replicas-to-write can bite you. If replicas fall too far behind, the master stops accepting writes, by design.

How Ivory solves them

Every node, one overview

Add your Redis nodes to an Ivory cluster, and the overview shows them all:

  • Role — a node with role:slave is a replica, any other is the master. A node still loading its dataset shows as starting.
  • Lag — seconds since a replica last heard from its master. Ivory warns past 30 seconds.
  • Tags — the Redis version, the memory in use, and on the master, the number of connected replicas.

One honest note: a Redis master doesn't list its replicas in Ivory. The addresses Redis shows for them are wherever their connection came from — often a Docker gateway or ::1 — not an address anyone could actually connect to. Listing them would invent nodes that don't exist. So Ivory shows how many replicas are connected instead, and you add every node to the cluster yourself. A replica does report the master it follows, and Ivory uses that.

Warnings for the quiet failures

This is where Ivory earns its place for Redis. It warns when:

  • a replica's link to its master is down — and for how long,
  • the last background save or AOF write failed,
  • a full resync is in progress,
  • min-replicas-to-write is not met, or replicas are past min-replicas-max-lag.

All of these are things Redis knows but doesn't shout about. Ivory turns them into a red line on the overview. And a replica whose link is down shows its lag as unknown, not 0 — because a dead link isn't zero lag.

Promote a replica

When the master is gone, pick a replica and press Failover. Ivory promotes it with REPLICAOF NO ONE. It's refused on the master, so you can't promote the node that's already in charge by mistake.

Ivory doesn't integrate with Sentinel or Redis Cluster, so there's no automatic failover or switchover — this is a manual, deliberate promotion. You can also view the full configuration (CONFIG GET *) from the same screen.

A console for any command

The console sends any Redis command, exactly as typed. You can browse the numbered databases, list connected clients and kill one with CLIENT KILL.

There are saved queries for everything you usually check: server info, keyspace, replication, clients, slow log, latency, memory, persistence, command stats and configuration. One click instead of remembering which INFO section you need.

The machine behind each node

Redis is memory-bound, so the machine matters. Give Ivory an SSH key and each node shows its host's CPU, memory, network, processes and any log file. If Redis runs in Docker, the Container tab shows its logs and lets you inspect, restart, stop or start it.

Need a new Redis setup?

Ivory deploys one over plain SSH from a template, with the default user's password set right on the deploy screen:

  • Redis (Multi Host) — three nodes redis1–redis3, one per machine, on port 6379, with append-only persistence on a volume. The replicas' commands name the master's address literally — replace it with your first node's host.
  • Redis (Single Host) — all three on one machine on ports 6379–6381, without persistence. Great for trying it out.

Ask your AI agent

With Ivory's built-in MCP server you can connect Claude, Cursor or Codex and ask:

"Are all my Redis replicas connected to the master?"

"Why is redis2 refusing writes?"

"Show me the slow log on the master and explain the worst commands."

"The master is down — which replica is the freshest? Promote it after I confirm."

The agent works through Ivory, under exactly your permissions. More in the MCP docs.

Try it 

docker run -p 80:80 --restart always veegres/ivory

Open http://localhost, finish the setup wizard and add your Redis nodes. Redis support is in beta: it works end to end, and real-world feedback is exactly what will make it stable.

Keep your cache warm and your replicas close. 😉

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