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Redis Commander - Connection Configuration

This file describes all parameters available to configure connections to redis servers. All connection objects are stored inside the top-level connections list.

Storing Connection information

The default set of connections to start redis commander with can be defined inside the local.json file (for example). Whenever a connection is added via Web-UI or command line a new file local-<node_env>.json is created to store the new list of all connections currently used. This is done to persist new configuration data over app restarts. To reset the list to your "original" start, just delete

Attention - list objects are not merged between all config files. The latest definition of the list is used. E.G. a redefinition of the connections list object inside the local-<node_env>.json overwrites all connections defined inside <node-env>.json or local.json.

Connect via Unix-Socket

Only the "path" parameter is needed with the path to the unix socket to use. Parameter "host", "port" and all "sentinel*" should not be set.

{
  "connections": [
    {
      "label": "redis-unix-socket",
      "path": "/var/run/redis.socket",
      "password": "<optional>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    }
  ]
}

Connect to normal standalone Redis server

"host" and "port" are needed. Do not set "path" or one of the "sentinel*" parameter as they have precedence over "host" and "port"! "host" can be either an IPv4 address, IPv6 address or a hostname.

{
  "connections": [
    {
      "label": "redis-standalone",
      "host": "192.0.2.1",
      "port": 6379,
      "password": "<optional>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    }
  ]
}

Connect to Redis server via Redis sentinel

Parameter "sentinels" contains a list of one or more Redis sentinels used for connection. For better failover handling at least two sentinels should be provided to allow connections if one of them is temporarily not available. This sentinels can either be set as a String containing <ip>:<port> or as an object with host and port field. The second variant with an object allows setting more parameter (as described by ioredis library sentinel connection documentation).

If sentinels needs authentication (not auth from redis server itself but sentinel) the password must be set as "sentinelPassword". Another optional parameter is "sentinelName" setting the default server group the client should use to fetch master server data from sentinels. Default is "mymaster" here if not set.

Parameter "path", "host" and "port" are ignored.

The following configuration lists different kind of valid sentinels string that will be parsed as list of sentinels to connect:

  1. pure comma separated string
  2. stringified json array
  3. array of strings
  4. array of objects

Attention - connecting to a Redis server via IPv6 the form with a list of objects must be used (last example). All other variants do not work due to ":" being part of the IPv6 address too.

{
  "connections": [
    {
      "label": "redis-sentinel-1",
      "sentinels": "192.0.2.2:26379, 192.0.2.3:26379",
      "sentinelName": "mymaster",
      "password": "<optional-redis-server-pw>",
      "sentinelPassword": "<optional-sentinel-pw>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    },
    {
      "label": "redis-sentinel-2",
      "sentinels": "[192.0.2.2:26379, 192.0.2.3:26379]",
      "sentinelName": "mymaster",
      "password": "<optional-redis-server-pw>",
      "sentinelPassword": "<optional-sentinel-pw>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    },
    {
      "label": "redis-sentinel-3",
      "sentinels": [
        "192.0.2.2:26379",
        "192.0.2.3:26379"
      ],
      "sentinelName": "mymaster",
      "password": "<optional-redis-server-pw>",
      "sentinelPassword": "<optional-sentinel-pw>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    },
    {
      "label": "redis-sentinel-4",
      "sentinels": [
        { "host": "192.0.2.2", "port": 26379 },
        { "host": "192.0.2.3", "port": 26379 },
        { "host": "fd00:2::3", "port": 26379 }
      ],
      "sentinelName": "mymaster",
      "password": "<optional-redis-server-pw>",
      "sentinelPassword": "<optional-sentinel-pw>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    }
  ]
}

Connect to redis server in cluster mode

To connect to a redis cluster two possible ways can be used

  1. just define connection parameter to one cluster member with regular --redis-* configuration parameters and set the --is-cluster flag. The disadvance is that there is no fallback list of other cluster members for INITIAL connection if this member is not reachable. As soon as a connection is established the other cluster members are read by ioredis and used on reconnect.
$ redis-commander --host localhost --port 6579 --tls --is-cluster

Connection definition within the config JSON file:

{
  "connections": [
    {
      "label": "simple-redis-cluster",
      "host": "localhost",
      "port": 6379,
      "password": "<optional-redis-server-pw>",
      "dbIndex": 0,
      "isCluster": true
    },
  1. Define a comma-separated list of multiple cluster members with "host:port" values on startup. Giving cluster members explicit the "--is-cluster" flag is not needed.
$ redis-commander --clusters 192.0.2.2:6379:6379,192.0.2.3:6379 --tls

Connection definition within the config JSON file. The syntax of the server list is the same as for Redis sentinel connections: 1. pure comma separated string with "host:port" entries 2. stringified json array 3. array of strings 4. array of objects

{
  "connections": [
    {
      "label": "cluster-1",
      "clusters": "192.0.2.2:6379,192.0.2.3:6379",
      "password": "<optional-redis-server-pw>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    },
    {
      "label": "cluster-2",
      "clusters": "[192.0.2.2:6379, 192.0.2.3:6379]",
      "password": "<optional-redis-server-pw>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    },
    {
      "label": "cluster-3",
      "sentinels": [
        "192.0.2.2:6379",
        "192.0.2.3:6379"
      ],
      "password": "<optional-redis-server-pw>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    },
    {
      "label": "cluster-4",
      "sentinels": [
        { "host": "192.0.2.2", "port": 6379 },
        { "host": "192.0.2.3", "port": 6379 },
        { "host": "fd00:2::3", "port": 6379 }
      ],
      "password": "<optional-redis-server-pw>",
      "dbIndex": 0
    }

Independent on the way the cluster members are defined the TLS settings for Redis server are used for them, there are no special Cluster-TLS settings available.

Certificate Error [ERR_TLS_CERT_ALTNAME_INVALID] or "ClusterAllFailedError" for cluster connections

Connection to AWS MemoryDB with TLS secured routes might fail with the error [ERR_TLS_CERT_ALTNAME_INVALID] or a more generic ClusterAllFailedError: Failed to refresh slots cache.

This happens for ioredis after connection to the main server node and trying to connect ot all other nodes of the cluster where the name of the TLS certificate used is not the server ioredis connects too. And the IP address of the node is also not part of the certificate, hence the [ERR_TLS_CERT_ALTNAME_INVALID].

To fix this error the connection property clusterNoTlsValidation=true shall be set.

{
  "connections": [
    {
      "label": "aws-memorydb",
      "host": "redis",
      "port": 6379,
      "tls": true, 
      "clusterNoTlsValidation": true
    }
  ]
}

Or on the command line to start the app or a docker container:

# local start of application from command line to MemoryDB
$ redis-commander --redis-host redis --redis-port 6379 --redis-tls --cluster-no-tls-validation ...
# running inside docker container
$ docker run -e REDIS_TLS=1 -e REDIS_HOST=redis -e REDIS_PORT=6379 -e CLUSTER_NO_TLS_VALIDATION=true ... ghcr.io/joeferner/redis-commander

ATTENTION: The generic ClusterAllFailedError might have different reasons, e.g. initial connection to a node not allowed to return IP addresses or names of other cluster nodes or similar. Therefor setting this connection properties does not help every time. The "ioredis" ClusterAllFailedError often hides the real reason for this error. To check what might be the real reason start Redis-Commander with the following NodeJS debug environment variable to see more output from "ioredis". Be warned: this will print the configured password to StdOut too!

$ export NODE_DEBUG="ioredis:*"
$ redis-commander --redis-host redis --redis-port 6379 --redis-tls

Setting the DEBUG env var for ioredis shows much more debig information diring ioredis trying to connect to the server with some other helpful error message to solve the problem.

Connection Parameters

The FIRST connection can be configured from the command line or via environment variables as listed below.

Configuring multiple connections either use the --redis-hosts (plural) cli param, REDIS_HOSTS env var inside docker or (much better) configure them directly inside your own custom json config file.

THE --redis-... / --sentinel-... COMMAND LINE PARAMS AND THE RESPECTIVE ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES WORK FOR THE FIRST CONNECITON ONLY!

The environment variables work for the docker image only, not for the stand-alone app!

Name Type Default Cli Environment-Var (Docker only) Description
path string '' --redis-socket REDIS_SOCKET path to the redis server socket, e.g. '/var/run/redis/redis.sock'
host string localhost --redis-host REDIS_HOST hostname or ipv4/ipv6 address of redis server (standalone mode)
port number 6379 --redis-port REDIS_PORT port number where redis server listens (standalone mode)
username string '' --redis-username REDIS_USERNAME optional username of the redis server itself (socket, standalone, sentinel or cluster mode - supported since Redis 6.0)
password string '' --redis-password REDIS_PASSWORD optional password of the redis server itself (socket, standalone, sentinel or cluster mode)
label string '' --redis-label display label to us to identify this connection within the Web-UI
db number 0 --redis-db REDIS_DB Number of database, starting with 0, max allowed db number is configured server-side (default 15)
connectionName string '' use special connection name at this redis client to identify it with redis "CLIENT LIST" command. If not set default connection name from config param redis.connectionName is used
foldingChar string '' set connection specific value for the folding character, overwrites global config parameter 'ui.foldingChar'
sentinels string or list '' --sentinels SENTINELS string: comma separated list of sentinels with "host:port" (sentinel mode) or list of "host:port" strings
sentinelName string 'mymaster' --sentinel-name SENTINEL_NAME name of redis database group to connect to via sentinel. The default name of 'mymaster' can be change via global redis configuration value 'redis.defaultSentinelGroup' (sentinel mode)
sentinelUsername string --sentinel-username SENTINEL_USERNAME optional username to connect to sentinels itself. This is not the username of the redis server (sentinel mode - supported since Redis 6.0)
sentinelPassword string --sentinel-password SENTINEL_PASSWORD password to connect to sentinels itself. This is not the password of the redis server (sentinel mode)
clusters string or list '' --clusters CLUSTERS string: comma separated list of cluster nodes with "host:port" (sentinel mode) or list of "host:port" strings
isCluster boolean '' --is-cluster IS_CLUSTER boolean flag to use the values from "host" and "port" for connection setup
clusterNoTlsValidation boolean false --cluster-no-tls-validation CLUSTER_NO_TLS_VALIDATION booleanflag to disable TLS certifiacte checks for matching names. Needed e.g. for AWS MemoryDB cluster where certificate errors appear otherwise. This flag disdables TLS certificate validation only for auto-discovered direct cluster node access, not for the initial connection
insecureCertificate boolean false --insecure-certificate NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED globaly dsable all certificate checks for this connection, This flag is insecure and should only used for test seups with self-signed certificates where it is not possible to set a custom server tls.caCert
tls boolean or object false --redis-tls REDIS_TLS set to true to enable TLS secured connections to the redis server, for more specific configurations (allowed algorithms, server certificate checks and so on) this parameter can be an object directly use at Node tls sockets (https://github.com/luin/ioredis#tls-options)
tls.caCert string '' --redis-tls-ca-cert REDIS_TLS_CA_CERT PEM encoded ca certificate used by the Redis server to verify the server certificate on connect. Using this parameter "redis-tls" must be set to "true" too
string '' --redis-tls-ca-cert-file REDIS_TLS_CA_CERT_FILE file name holding the PEM encoded server certificate from Redis to verify the server certificate on connect. The content of the file is read and overrides the tls.caCert connection parameter. Using this parameter "redis-tls" must be set to "true" too
tls.cert string '' --redis-tls-cert REDIS_TLS_CERT PEM encoded client certificate for certificate based authentication if required by the Redis server. Using this parameter "redis-tls" must be set to "true" too
string '' --redis-tls-cert-file REDIS_TLS_CERT_FILE file name holding the PEM encoded client certificate requested by the Redis server for certificate based authentication. The content of the file is read and overrides the tls.cert connection parameter. Using this parameter "redis-tls" must be set to "true" too
tls.key string '' --redis-tls-key REDIS_TLS_KEY PEM encoded client certificate private key used for client authentication. Using this parameter "redis-tls" must be set to "true" too
string '' --redis-tls-key-file REDIS_TLS_KEY_FILE file name holding the PEM encoded client certificate private key requested by the Redis server client authentication. The content of the file is read and overrides the tls.key connection parameter. Using this parameter "redis-tls" must be set to "true" too
tls.servername string '' --redis-tls-server-name REDIS_TLS_SERVER_NAME FQDN used for SNI (server name indication) on connection to secured Redis server. Using this parameter "redis-tls" must be set to "true" too
sentinelTLS boolean or object false --sentinel-tls SENTINEL_TLS set to true to enable TLS secured connections to the sentinel, for more specific configurations (allowed algorithms, server certificate checks and so on) this parameter can be an object directly use at Node tls sockets (https://github.com/luin/ioredis#tls-options). If this value is a boolean the same TLS settings are reused as defined for the redis server connection.
sentinelTLS.caCert string '' --sentinel-tls-ca-cert SENTINEL_TLS_CA_CERT PEM encoded ca certificate used by the Sentinel server to verify the server certificate on connect. Using this parameter "sentinel-tls" must be set to "true" too
string '' --sentinel-tls-ca-cert-file SENTINEL_TLS_CA_CERT_FILE file name holding the PEM encoded server certificate from Sentinel to verify the server certificate on connect. The content of the file is read and overrides the sentinelTls.caCert connection parameter. Using this parameter "sentinel-tls" must be set to "true" too
sentinelTLS.cert string '' --sentinel-tls-cert SENTINEL_TLS_CERT PEM encoded client certificate for certificate based authentication if required by the Sentinel server. Using this parameter "sentinel-tls" must be set to "true" too
string '' --sentinel-tls-cert-file SENTINEL_TLS_CERT_FILE file name holding the PEM encoded client certificate requested by the Sentinel server for certificate based authentication. The content of the file is read and overrides the sentinelTls.cert connection parameter. Using this parameter "sentinel-tls" must be set to "true" too
sentinelTLS.key string '' --sentinel-tls-key SENTINEL_TLS_KEY PEM encoded client certificate private key used for client authentication. Using this parameter "sentinel-tls" must be set to "true" too
string '' --sentinel-tls-key-file SENTINEL_TLS_KEY_FILE file name holding the PEM encoded client certificate private key requested by the Sentinel server client authentication. The content of the file is read and overrides the sentinelTls.key connection parameter. Using this parameter "sentinel-tls" must be set to "true" too
sentinelTLS.servername string '' --sentinel-tls-server-name REDIS_TLS_SERVER_NAME FQDN used for SNI (server name indication) on connection to secured Redis server. Using this parameter "redis-tls" must be set to "true" too
optional boolean false --redis-optional REDIS_OPTIONAL set to true to not auto-reconnect on connection lost. Reconnect will be done if data are fetch from UI on user request

More complex configurations examples

Configure TLS Support

Using docker container to start Redis Commander its only possible to connect to one single Redis server with TLS activated. It is not possible to use the REDIS_HOSTS env var to connect to multiple Redis servers where one or more are using TLS.

The most common TLS settings are made available as environment variables inside the docker container and as command line parameters (enable TLS, custom CA certificate and X.509 client authentication).

Attention: for TLS secured Sentinel connection --sentinel-tls must be set. If this falg is used as a boolean to just enable TLS the configuration reuses all TLS configurations done for Redis server for the Sentinel. If this parameter contains an object the values from this object are used to create a custom TLS configuration for the Sentinel connections different from the one used to connect to the Redis server itself.

And using some special TLS configuration command line parameter or environment variables (on Docker) requires setting the --redis-tls and/or '--sentinel-tls' config set. Without enabling TLS support for the respective connection the special parameter like custom CA certificate are ignored.

Basic TLS usage

TLS must be enabled for Redis server and Sentinel independent of each other. The most simple use case is enable TLS support without special CA certificates or client authentication:

# local start of application from command line
$ redis-commander --redis-tls --sentinel-tls ...
# running inside docker container
$ docker run -e REDIS_TLS=1 -e SENTINEL_TLS=1 ... ghcr.io/joeferner/redis-commander

TLS with custom CA server certificates

Requiring a special CA certificate (e.g. not stored in systems default certificate store) on connection to Redis server. Redis Sentinel is using the same CA certificate as the server does. The certificate is store in local file "cacert.pem".

# local start of application from command line
$ redis-commander --redis-tls --redis-tls-ca-cert-file=cacert.pem --sentinel-tls ...
# running inside docker container
$ docker run -v "./cacert.pem:/tmp/cacert.pem" -e REDIS_TLS=1 -e REDIS_TLS_CA_CERT_FILE=/tmp/cacert.pem -e SENTINEL_TLS=1 ... ghcr.io/joeferner/redis-commander

And if content of the CA certificate file is stored inside an environment variable use env var "REDIS_TLS_CA_CERT" instead.

# local start of application from command line
$ redis-commander --redis-tls --redis-tls-ca-cert="${CA_CERT}" --sentinel-tls ...

If, for some reasons the Redis server and the Sentinel server use different CA certificates specify booth at the command line. Here only cli example is given, Docker one is similar.

# local start of application from command line
$ redis-commander --redis-tls --redis-tls-ca-cert-file=cacert.pem --sentinel-tls --sentinel-tls-ca-cert-file=othercacert.pem ...

TLS certificate based client authentication

When booth Redis server and Redis sentinel require same client certificate, set the files with following parameters. The public certificate part and the private certificate key must be stored in different files (e.g. clientCert.pem and clientKey.pem)

# local start of application from command line
$ redis-commander --redis-tls --redis-tls-cert-file=clientCert.pem --redis-tls-key-file=clientKey.pem --sentinel-tls ...

Example for Redis server (clientCert.pem/clientKey.pem) and Sentinel server (sentinelCert.pem / sentinelKey.pem) with different client certificates:

# local start of application from command line
$ redis-commander --redis-tls --redis-tls-cert-file=clientCert.pem --redis-tls-key-file=clientKey.pem --sentinel-tls --sentinel-tls-cert-file=sentinelCert.pem --sentinel-tls-key-file=sentinelKey.pem ...

Set SNI name for TLS secured connections

Booth Redis server TLS connection and Sentinel server TLS connection can set a special full qualified domain name to use with server base SNI (Server Name Indication) to set up TLS with correct server certificate:

# local start of application from command line
$ redis-commander --redis-tls --redis-tls-server-name=redis.example.org --sentinel-tls --sentinel-tls-server-name=sentinel.example.org ...

Connect to TLS secured Redis inside docker container (most flexible config)

Using docker container to start Redis Commander its only possible to connect to one single Redis server with TLS activated. It is not possible to use the REDIS_HOSTS env var to connect to multiple Redis servers where one or more are using TLS.

To support this scenario a custom redis configuration file must be created and mounted into the docker container. It does not matter if it is a real file, a docker config object or (using Kubernetes) a configmap or secret to get file content from.

The following example assumes we want to connect to two different Redis servers, booth using TLS with docker-compose. Using pure docker or Kubernetes instead follows the same logic.

Important: Do not set the REDIS_HOSTS env var in this case, define all connections needed inside the new config file.

Create a new config file (e.g. myconnections.json) with the following content:

{
  "connections": [
    {
      "label": "first-db",
      "host": "redis",
      "port": 6379,
      "password": "pass-x",
      "dbIndex": 0,
      "tls": true
    },
    {
      "label": "second-db",
      "host": "redis1",
      "port": 6379,
      "password": "pass-y",
      "dbIndex": 0,
      "tls": true
    }
  ]
}

Additional new default parameters for Redis Commander like HTTP-Auth or read-only mode and so on can be set here too if needed.

Now mount this file into the container as /redis-commander/config/local-production.json (Attention if docker engine is remote, the json config file must be referenced absolute and available one the remote docker host at this path!)

version: "3"
services:
  redis-commander:
    container_name: redis-commander
    hostname: redis-commander
    image: ghcr.io/joeferner/redis-commander:latest
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./myconnections.json:/redis-commander/config/local-production.json
    ports:
      - "8081:8081"

The file must be mounted read-write as all changes to the connection configurations (add or delete servers via web-UI) will be saved inside this file too to persist changed across docker container restarts.

If this file needs to be read-only mount it as local.json inside the container, e.g.:

services:
  redis-commander:
    ...
    volumes:
      - ./myconnections.json:/redis-commander/config/local.json:ro

DEVELOPMENT ONLY - disable all certificate checks

To disable all certificate checks (might be needed using self-signed certificate on test setup) either set the global NodeJS runtime environment variable NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=1 or add the --insecure-certificate flag to the redis commander command-line parameter. Booth ways disable certificate checks and allow every certificate.

Attention - using this flag opens possibility for man-in-the-middle attacs with forged certificates!