Monitor Redis with OpenTelemetry

Osuite monitors Redis through the OpenTelemetry Collector’s redis receiver, which runs the INFO command against a single instance and exports the results as metrics over OTLP. Keyspace hit ratios, memory pressure, and client counts arrive with the same resource attributes as your services, so a latency spike in APM correlates with the cache behind it.

Note

The redis receiver ships in the Collector contrib distribution. Use otelcol-contrib (or any build that includes it), not the core otelcol binary. Point one receiver at one Redis instance; add another receiver block per node in a cluster.

Setup

Prerequisites

• A reachable Redis server (3.0 or later).
• If the server sets requirepass or uses ACLs, a password (or a read-only ACL user permitted to run INFO).

Export the password to the Collector’s environment if one is required:

export REDIS_PASSWORD='a-strong-password'

Configure the Collector

1. Add the redis receiver, the otlp/osuite exporter, and a metrics pipeline. Pick the tab that matches where your Collector runs — only the receiver endpoint changes.

   Bare host

   receivers:
     redis:
       endpoint: localhost:6379
       password: ${env:REDIS_PASSWORD}
       collection_interval: 30s
   
   processors:
     batch:
     resourcedetection:
   
   exporters:
     otlp/osuite:
       endpoint: ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443
       headers:
         x-osuite-ingest-token: <your-ingest-token>
   
   service:
     pipelines:
       metrics:
         receivers: [redis]
         processors: [batch, resourcedetection]
         exporters: [otlp/osuite]

   Docker

   receivers:
     redis:
       endpoint: redis:6379
       password: ${env:REDIS_PASSWORD}
       collection_interval: 30s
   
   processors:
     batch:
     resourcedetection:
   
   exporters:
     otlp/osuite:
       endpoint: ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443
       headers:
         x-osuite-ingest-token: <your-ingest-token>
   
   service:
     pipelines:
       metrics:
         receivers: [redis]
         processors: [batch, resourcedetection]
         exporters: [otlp/osuite]

   Kubernetes

   receivers:
     redis:
       endpoint: redis.default.svc.cluster.local:6379
       password: ${env:REDIS_PASSWORD}
       collection_interval: 30s
   
   processors:
     batch:
     resourcedetection:
   
   exporters:
     otlp/osuite:
       endpoint: ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443
       headers:
         x-osuite-ingest-token: <your-ingest-token>
   
   service:
     pipelines:
       metrics:
         receivers: [redis]
         processors: [batch, resourcedetection]
         exporters: [otlp/osuite]

2. Start the Collector. On Docker and Kubernetes, the Collector and Redis must share a network so the endpoint resolves.

Validate

What you should see

Metrics named redis.* appear in Dashboards → Explore metrics within a minute, tagged with the host or pod the Collector runs on.

Data collected

Metric	Description	Unit
redis.clients.connected	Client connections, excluding replicas	{client}
redis.clients.blocked	Clients pending on a blocking call	{client}
redis.commands	Commands processed per second	{ops}/s
redis.commands.processed	Total commands processed since start	{command}
redis.connections.received	Connections accepted by the server	{connection}
redis.keyspace.hits	Successful key lookups	{hit}
redis.keyspace.misses	Failed key lookups	{miss}
redis.memory.used	Memory allocated by Redis	By
redis.db.keys	Keys per keyspace	{key}
redis.cpu.time	CPU consumed since server start	s

Enable replication, RDB persistence, and network-throughput metrics with the receiver’s optional metric toggles when you need them.

Dashboards and alerts

Once metrics arrive, build a Redis dashboard in the dashboard builder from the series above. Alerts in Osuite are PromQL-based — see Alerts. Useful starting conditions: a low hit ratio (redis.keyspace.hits versus redis.keyspace.misses), redis.memory.used nearing maxmemory, and a rising redis.clients.blocked count.

Troubleshooting

• NOAUTH / WRONGPASS — confirm REDIS_PASSWORD matches the server’s requirepass or ACL user.
• No metrics — confirm the Collector can reach the port and that the instance answers INFO (some managed Redis services restrict it).

No data in Osuite after a few minutes? Work through these checks.

• Endpoint — confirm the exporter targets exactly ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443 for your region, over TLS.
• Token — confirm the ingest header carries a valid <your-ingest-token> and has not been rotated.
• Pipeline — confirm the signal you expect (traces, logs, or metrics) is wired into an active pipeline with the otlp/osuite exporter attached.
• Export errors — check the application or Collector logs for OTLP export failures (auth, DNS, TLS, connection refused).
• Network — confirm the host has outbound access to the ingest endpoint on port 443.
• Timing — allow up to a minute for the first data to appear before assuming a failure.

Still stuck? Ask the Investigation Agent or contact support.