memtier_benchmark is a command line utility developed by Redis Labs (formerly Garantia Data Ltd.) for load generation and bechmarking NoSQL key-value databases. It offers the following:

• Support for both Redis and Memcache protocols (text and binary)
• Multi-threaded multi-client execution
• Multiple configuration options, including:
• Read:Write ratio
• Random and sequential key name pattern policies
• Random or ranged key expiration
• Redis cluster
• ...and much more

Read more at:

• A High Throughput Benchmarking Tool for Redis and Memcached
• Pseudo-Random Data, Gaussian Access Pattern and Range Manipulation

The following libraries are required for building:

• libevent 2.0.10 or newer.
• libpcre 8.x.

The following tools are required

• autoconf
• automake
• pkg-config
• GNU make
• GCC C++ compiler

On a CentOS 6.x system, use the following to install prerequisites:

# yum install autoconf automake make gcc-c++ 
# yum install pcre-devel zlib-devel libmemcached-devel

CentOS 6.4 ships with older versions of libevent, which must be manually built and installed as follows:

To download, build and install libevent-2.0.21:

$ wget https://github.com/downloads/libevent/libevent/libevent-2.0.21-stable.tar.gz
$ tar xfz libevent-2.0.21-stable.tar.gz
$ pushd libevent-2.0.21-stable
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ popd

The above steps will install into /usr/local so it does not confict with the distribution-bundled versions. The last step is to set up the PKG_CONFIG_PATH so configure can find the newly installed library.

$ export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:${PKG_CONFIG_PATH}

Then proceed to follow the build instructions below.

On Ubuntu/Debian distributions, simply install all prerequisites as follows:

# apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libpcre3-dev libevent-dev pkg-config zlib1g-dev

To build natively on macOS, use Homebrew to install the required dependencies::

$ brew install autoconf automake libtool libevent pkg-config

After downloading the source tree, use standard autoconf/automake commands::

$ autoreconf -ivf
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

$ docker build -t memtier_benchmark .
$ docker run --rm memtier_benchmark --help

See the included manpage or run::

$ memtier_benchmark --help

for command line options.

When using the cluster-mode option, each client opens one connection for each node. So, when using a large number of threads and clients, the user must verify that he is not limited by the maximum number of file descriptors.

When there is an asymmetry between the Redis nodes and user set the --requests option, there may be gaps in the generated keys.

Also, the ratio and the key generator is per client (and not connection). In this case, setting the ratio to 1:1 does not guarantee 100% hits because the keys spread to different connections/nodes.