Percona launches Valkey-proxy to ease Redis migration

Percona has announced Valkey-proxy, an open source project designed to help businesses adopt Valkey and move from Redis. The software has also been accepted as an official Valkey project.

Percona engineers developed the proxy so applications built for a single Valkey instance can run across a horizontally scaled cluster without rewriting client code. It sits between applications and Valkey instances, presenting the cluster as if it were a standalone deployment.

This addresses a common challenge for teams that start with standalone deployments and later move to cluster mode. In standalone mode, applications often depend on functions such as multi-key commands, keyspace scanning and pub/sub, which can behave differently in clustered environments.

Cluster deployments also require clients to track which node holds which data and handle redirects as the cluster changes. That has often meant changing application logic when moving to a larger deployment.

The proxy manages communication between the application and Valkey instances, while pooling backend connections to keep connection counts limited as applications grow. The aim is to make cluster-based deployments appear as a single instance from the application's point of view.

Valkey is an in-memory key-value data store used for caching and database workloads that require low latency. It operates in standalone mode for smaller deployments and in cluster mode for larger systems that need built-in scale and redundancy.

Migration route

The launch targets organisations looking for an open source route away from commercial Redis products. Percona said similar proxy approaches exist in commercial Redis offerings, but argued that those options can leave users tied to paid software or cloud-managed services linked to specific platforms.

"Many enterprises want to move to Valkey, but without a standard open source proxy, they can't," said Kyle Davis, General Manager for Valkey at Percona.

"Their choices are to stay on commercial Redis, which is expensive to license and run, or move to a cloud provider's managed service. Those providers' proxies are tied to their own platforms and aren't open source - that doesn't work for every company," Davis said.

Percona also framed the project around concerns about vendor lock-in and data sovereignty. By releasing the software as open source, it aims to offer users a migration path that does not depend on proprietary infrastructure or platform-specific tooling.

"Valkey-proxy gives teams on commercial Redis a clear way to migrate, and it makes communication between instances simpler for teams already running Valkey," Davis said.

Open source focus

The software is due to be published under the BSD-3-Clause licence. Development is under way, with a code release planned for mid-October, followed by a public feedback and testing period. General availability is targeted for early 2027.

The project adds to the growing ecosystem around Valkey, which emerged as an open source alternative in the in-memory data store market. For companies running complex Redis deployments, a proxy layer could reduce the amount of application rework needed to move to a fully open source stack.

Percona, which provides open source database software, support and services, has worked across database technologies including MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Valkey and Redis. With Valkey-proxy, it is seeking to address one of the technical barriers facing organisations that want to expand beyond single-instance deployments without rewriting applications.

The code will be released under the BSD-3-Clause licence.