Redis restriction reaction: Percona offers support for Valkey

Enterprise-grade open source database software and services company Percona has announced the availability of Percona Support for Valkey – a, responsive service offering that promises to maintain reliable, optimised Valkey deployments on-premises, in hybrid zones, or in the cloud. 

Announced by The Linux Foundation in March of 2024, Valkey is an open source fork of the Redis in-memory, NoSQL key-value datastore. 

The project was launched in response to Redis’s decision to abandon its long-held commitment to open source licensing in favour of a much more restrictive, source-available model. 

Today, Redis is now dual-licensed under the Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and Server Side Public License (SSPLv1), while Valkey has maintained the datastore’s original open source BSD license. 

Percona has also introduced comprehensive Valkey Migration services, to help make the switch from Redis OSS to Valkey as non-disruptive as possible. 

“When the Linux Foundation first announced its plans for Valkey last March, Percona immediately threw its support behind the project,” said Ann Schlemmer,  CEO of Percona. “Beyond the simple fact that many of our customers also relied on Redis for their data operations, we at Percona were motivated by our fundamental belief in the principles of open source—that an open world is a better world—and we remain committed to doing everything we can to help foster and promote such a world.”

In the wake of all these decisions, Valkey has enjoyed support from both the open source and business communities alike. 

Superb support

Since its very first announcement, a number of major tech industry players – including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Ericsson and Percona – have put their support behind Valkey.

In addition to its commercial support offerings, Percona has dedicated staff to building new capabilities around programmability and security, as well as fixing bugs, on core Valkey projects.

Percona says that thanks in no small part to such support, Valkey has already established itself as far more than a mere maintenance fork. In the five months between its first formal release (Valkey 7.2.5) in April 2024 and its most recent (Valkey 8.0.0) in September, Valkey has seen major improvements in performance, reliability and efficiency.

“The almost immediate explosion of interest and support for Valkey goes beyond just the technology itself,” said Peter Zaitsev, co-founder at Percona. “It wasn’t simply a matter of companies looking to control costs. It was an expression of widespread dissatisfaction and frustration that people are feeling with self-proclaimed “open source” software vendors suddenly deciding to abandon the model. It was a palpable response, and one we felt here at Percona. That’s why Valkey is the first addition to our list of supported technologies in nearly half a decade. And we will continue to support Valkey, as well as other open source initiatives like it, for as long as they’re here.” 

Valkey is already enjoying significant levels of interest and adoption. 

Valkey velcoity

In a survey report from Percona, 75% of Redis users said they were either actively testing, considering or had already adopted Valkey. The study also found that more than three-quarters (76%) of organisations plan to rely on third-party enterprise support for their Valkey deployments. 

Percona has also introduced the new Redis OSS Health Assessment – a preemptive evaluation of an organisation’s existing Redis deployment(s) and overall migration readiness.