Viator

A high-performance, memory-safe Redis-compatible toolkit

Note: Viator is Redis® 8.4.0 protocol-compatible. Redis is a registered trademark of Redis Ltd. Viator is not affiliated with or endorsed by Redis Ltd.

Status

Published on crates.io - Verified with redis-cli 8.4.0. Suitable for testing and non-production workloads.

Overview

Viator is a high-performance, memory-safe Redis-compatible toolkit featuring:

• Full RESP3 Protocol - Wire-compatible with Redis clients
• All Core Data Types - String, List, Hash, Set, Sorted Set, Stream, VectorSet
• Vector Similarity Search - HNSW algorithm for semantic search and RAG applications
• Redis Stack Modules - JSON, TimeSeries, Bloom, Cuckoo, TopK, T-Digest, CMS
• High Availability - Cluster mode with automatic failover, Sentinel monitoring
• Persistence - AOF and VDB with CRC64 checksums and LZF compression
• Lua Scripting - Full Lua 5.4 scripting with real SHA1 hashing
• Enterprise Security - ACL, TLS, audit logging, AUTH rate limiting

Installation

From crates.io

cargo install viator

This installs all binaries to ~/.cargo/bin/:

• viator-server - Main server
• viator-cli - Command-line client
• viator-benchmark - Performance benchmarking
• viator-check-vdb - VDB file integrity checker
• viator-check-aof - AOF file checker
• viator-sentinel - High availability monitor
• viator-dump - Data export tool
• viator-load - Data import tool
• viator-shake - Live data synchronization

Build from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/panggi/viator.git
cd viator

# Build in release mode
cargo build --release

# Run the server
./target/release/viator-server

Quick Start

# Start the server
viator-server --port 6379 --bind 127.0.0.1

Using viator-cli

# Connect with viator-cli
viator-cli -p 6379

# Test basic commands
127.0.0.1:6379> SET hello "world"
OK
127.0.0.1:6379> GET hello
"world"

Configuration Options

viator-server --port 6380           # Custom port
viator-server --bind 0.0.0.0        # Listen on all interfaces
viator-server --help                # Show all options

Features

Data Types

*Redis 8.0+ commands

Redis Stack Modules

# JSON
JSON.SET user $ '{"name":"John","age":30}'
JSON.GET user $.name

# Bloom Filter
BF.ADD myfilter "item1"
BF.EXISTS myfilter "item1"

# Time Series
TS.CREATE temperature RETENTION 86400
TS.ADD temperature * 23.5

# Top-K
TOPK.RESERVE trending 10
TOPK.ADD trending "item1" "item2"

Vector Similarity Search

HNSW-based vector similarity search for semantic search, recommendations, and RAG:

# Add vectors (128-dimensional embeddings)
VADD embeddings FP32 VALUES 128 0.1 0.2 ... 0.9 "doc1"
VADD embeddings FP32 VALUES 128 0.2 0.3 ... 0.8 "doc2" SETATTR category "tech"

# Find similar vectors
VSIM embeddings FP32 VALUES 128 0.1 0.2 ... 0.9 TOPK 10

# With filtering
VSIM embeddings FP32 VALUES 128 0.1 0.2 ... 0.9 TOPK 10 FILTER "category == 'tech'"

# Get vector info
VINFO embeddings
VCARD embeddings

See VECTORSET.md for detailed documentation.

Cluster Mode (Redis 8.4 Compatible)

# Cluster information
CLUSTER INFO
CLUSTER NODES
CLUSTER SLOTS

# Redis 8.2+ Slot Statistics
CLUSTER SLOT-STATS SLOTSRANGE 0 100

# Redis 8.4 Atomic Migration
CLUSTER MIGRATION IMPORT 0-1000 NODES source-node-id
CLUSTER MIGRATION STATUS

Sentinel High Availability

# Monitor a master
SENTINEL MONITOR mymaster 127.0.0.1 6379 2

# Get master address
SENTINEL GET-MASTER-ADDR-BY-NAME mymaster

# Check quorum
SENTINEL CKQUORUM mymaster

Transactions & Scripting

# Transactions
MULTI
SET key1 "value1"
INCR counter
EXEC

# Lua Scripting
EVAL "return redis.call('GET', KEYS[1])" 1 mykey

Pub/Sub

# Subscribe to channels
SUBSCRIBE news sports

# Publish messages
PUBLISH news "Breaking news!"

Architecture

Viator is built on a modular architecture:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                        Client Layer                          │
│  ┌─────────┐  ┌─────────┐  ┌─────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐ │
│  │  RESP3  │  │   TLS   │  │  Rate   │  │  Connection     │ │
│  │ Parser  │  │ Support │  │ Limiter │  │  Manager        │ │
│  └─────────┘  └─────────┘  └─────────┘  └─────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                       Command Layer                          │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│
│  │              Command Registry (200+ commands)           ││
│  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘│
│  ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌────────────────┐ │
│  │  Strings │ │  Lists   │ │  Hashes  │ │  Sorted Sets   │ │
│  └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └────────────────┘ │
│  ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌────────────────┐ │
│  │  Streams │ │   Geo    │ │   JSON   │ │  TimeSeries    │ │
│  └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                       Storage Layer                          │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│
│  │          DashMap (Concurrent Hash Tables)               ││
│  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘│
│  ┌──────────────┐  ┌──────────────┐  ┌───────────────────┐ │
│  │    Expiry    │  │   Pub/Sub    │  │    Persistence    │ │
│  │   Manager    │  │     Hub      │  │   (AOF + VDB)     │ │
│  └──────────────┘  └──────────────┘  └───────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Distributed Layer                         │
│  ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐ │
│  │  Cluster Bus    │  │    Sentinel     │  │ Replication │ │
│  │  (Gossip)       │  │    Monitor      │  │   Manager   │ │
│  └─────────────────┘  └─────────────────┘  └─────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

For detailed documentation:

• API.md - RESP3 protocol and client integration
• ARCHITECTURE.md - System design and module overview
• CLUSTER.md - Cluster and Sentinel deployment guide
• COMPATIBILITY.md - Redis 8.4.0 command compatibility spec
• CONFIG.md - Complete configuration reference
• DOCKER.md - Docker deployment guide
• PERSISTENCE.md - AOF and VDB persistence
• SECURITY.md - Authentication, ACL, TLS
• VECTORSET.md - Vector similarity search

Performance

Viator leverages Rust's zero-cost abstractions for high performance:

• Memory Allocator: mimalloc for fast short-lived allocations
• Concurrency: Lock-free data structures (DashMap, crossbeam)
• I/O: Tokio async runtime
• Zero-Copy: Bytes crate for efficient buffer management
• SIMD: memchr for fast byte searching
• Perfect Hashing: O(1) command dispatch with PHF
• Sharded Storage: 64-shard architecture for reduced lock contention
• Inline Responses: Pre-allocated RESP responses for common replies
• Response Coalescing: Batched writes to reduce syscall overhead

Security

Memory Safety

• Written primarily in safe Rust with minimal, documented unsafe blocks
• Eliminates buffer overflows, use-after-free, data races
• Bounds checking on all array/slice access
• NaN-safe float comparisons (no panic on edge cases)
• All unsafe blocks have SAFETY documentation comments

Authentication & Authorization

• ACL system with user permissions and key patterns
• Argon2id password hashing (memory-hard)
• Constant-time password comparison (prevents timing attacks)
• AUTH rate limiting: 10 failures → 60-second lockout
• Command-level access control with categories

Memory Management

• Maxmemory enforcement with configurable limits
• LRU eviction with Redis-style 5-key sampling algorithm
• Volatile-TTL, volatile-random, allkeys-random policies supported
• Real-time memory metrics via INFO command

Network Security

• TLS 1.3 via rustls (memory-safe)
• Rate limiting per IP
• Connection limits and buffer size controls

Lua Sandboxing

• Restricted function set (no os, io, debug)
• Memory and instruction limits
• Execution timeouts
• Real SHA1 script identification (Redis-compatible)

See SECURITY.md for detailed security documentation.

Building

Requirements

• Rust 1.85 or later
• Cargo

Feature Flags

# Default features
cargo build --release

# With TLS support
cargo build --release --features tls

# With OpenTelemetry
cargo build --release --features telemetry

# Minimal build
cargo build --release --no-default-features

Running Tests

# Run all tests
cargo test

# Run benchmarks
cargo bench

# Test with viator-cli (start server first)
./target/release/viator-server &
viator-cli PING
viator-cli SET foo bar
viator-cli GET foo

CLI Tools

Viator includes a complete suite of command-line utilities:

viator-server

The main server binary.

viator-server --port 6379 --bind 127.0.0.1
viator-server --help

viator-cli

Interactive command-line client (redis-cli compatible).

# Connect to server
viator-cli -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379

# Execute single command
viator-cli -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 SET foo bar

# With authentication
viator-cli -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 -a mypassword

viator-benchmark

Performance benchmarking tool (redis-benchmark compatible).

# Run default benchmarks
viator-benchmark -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379

# Custom benchmark
viator-benchmark -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 -c 50 -n 100000 -t set,get

# With pipelining
viator-benchmark -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 -P 16

📊 Latest benchmark results: GitHub Actions Benchmark

viator-check-vdb

VDB (snapshot) file integrity checker.

# Check VDB file integrity
viator-check-vdb dump.vdb

# Verbose output
viator-check-vdb -v dump.vdb

viator-check-aof

AOF (append-only file) integrity checker and repair tool.

# Check AOF file
viator-check-aof appendonly.aof

# Attempt to fix corrupted AOF
viator-check-aof --fix appendonly.aof

viator-sentinel

High availability monitoring daemon.

# Monitor a master
viator-sentinel --master mymaster --host 127.0.0.1 --port 6379 --quorum 2

# With down-after threshold
viator-sentinel --master mymaster --host 127.0.0.1 --port 6379 --quorum 2 --down-after 5000

viator-dump

Data export tool for backup and migration.

# Export to RDB format
viator-dump -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 -o backup.rdb

# Export to JSON format
viator-dump -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 --format json -o backup.json

viator-load

Data import tool for restoration and migration.

# Import from RDB file
viator-load -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 -i backup.rdb

# Import from JSON file
viator-load -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 --format json -i backup.json

viator-shake

Live data synchronization between instances.

# Sync from source to target
viator-shake --source 127.0.0.1:6379 --target 127.0.0.1:6380

# With filtering
viator-shake --source 127.0.0.1:6379 --target 127.0.0.1:6380 --filter "user:*"

Compatibility

Viator targets Redis 8.4.0 protocol compatibility:

Project Structure

├── src/
│   ├── bin/            # CLI tool binaries
│   │   ├── viator-cli.rs        # Command-line client
│   │   ├── viator-benchmark.rs  # Performance benchmarking
│   │   ├── viator-check-vdb.rs  # VDB file checker
│   │   ├── viator-check-aof.rs  # AOF file checker
│   │   ├── viator-sentinel.rs   # HA monitoring daemon
│   │   ├── viator-dump.rs       # Data export tool
│   │   ├── viator-load.rs       # Data import tool
│   │   └── viator-shake.rs      # Live data sync
│   ├── commands/       # Command implementations (200+ commands)
│   ├── protocol/       # RESP3 parser and frame handling
│   ├── server/         # TCP server, connections, cluster, sentinel
│   ├── storage/        # Database, expiry management
│   ├── persistence/    # AOF and VDB persistence (CRC64, LZF)
│   ├── security/       # ACL, TLS, audit, rate limiting
│   ├── types/          # Data type implementations (VectorSet, etc.)
│   ├── pool.rs         # Buffer pooling
│   ├── error.rs        # Error types
│   ├── main.rs         # Server entry point (viator-server binary)
│   └── lib.rs          # Library root
├── docs/
│   ├── API.md          # RESP3 protocol and client guide
│   ├── ARCHITECTURE.md # System design overview
│   ├── BUILDING.md     # Build and development guide
│   ├── CLUSTER.md      # Cluster and Sentinel guide
│   ├── COMPATIBILITY.md # Redis command compatibility
│   ├── CONFIG.md       # Configuration reference
│   ├── DOCKER.md       # Docker deployment guide
│   ├── PERSISTENCE.md  # VDB/AOF documentation
│   ├── SECURITY.md     # Security features
│   └── VECTORSET.md    # Vector similarity search
├── fuzz/               # Fuzz testing targets
├── benches/            # Performance benchmarks
└── tests/              # Integration tests

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

Acknowledgments

• Redis Ltd. for creating Redis and the RESP protocol specification. Redis is a registered trademark of Redis Ltd.
• The Rust community for excellent async and systems libraries
• tokio, dashmap, bytes, and other crate authors