MateriaDB KV

MateriaDB is a new serverless databases offering by Clever Cloud. A whole range of services meeting the needs expressed by our customers in recent years, with an open and resilient approach. It includes deployment across multiple availability zones, compatibility with existing protocols, clients, and pay-as-you-go billing. It’s built on the FoundationDB open source transactional engine. A distributed and robust solution, notably thanks to its high simulation capacity.

MateriaDB KV is the first publicly available product of this family. It’s a key-value database which comes with simplicity in mind. You have no instance size to choose, no storage capacity to worry about. We simply provide you with a host address, a port and a token: you’re ready to go! Once our servers send a reply message, your data is durable: it’s synchronously replicated over 3 datacenters in Paris.

You don’t have to configure leaders, followers: high availability is included, by design.

Compatibility layers

We didn’t want this MateriaDB KV to come at the cost of complex configuration, requiring the use of special clients and ORMs. That’s why we’ve developed its compatibility layers. To “talk” to it, you don’t need a special API or tools specific to Clever Cloud. You’ll be able to use it with existing solutions for DynamoDB, GraphQL or Redis. The first available layer is compatible with Redis API (and its variants as Reddict or Valkey).

Thus, you can use a MateriaDB KV add-on with any compatible client within your applications, redis-cli or alternatives such as iredis. You can also use it with graphical interface (GUI). We tested many of them with success:

• Another Redis Desktop Client
• PX3 Redis UI
• Qredis
• Redis Commander
• Redis Insight

Create a MateriaDB KV add-on

You can create a MateriaDB KV add-on as simply as any other Clever Cloud service in the Console, following this link. Select the Alpha plan (free during testing phase), an application to link to (or none), give it a name, and you’ll get access to its dashboard giving you connection details. Environment variables shared with a linked application are listed in the Service dependencies section.

We included them with the REDIS_ format. Thus, you can just try to replace a Redis instance by MateriaDB KV. It’s as simple as linking the new add-on, unlinking the old one and restarting your application! (Check commands you’ll need first).

You can also use clever tools to create a MateriaDB KV add-on and set environment variables to test it with a PING command:

clever addon create kv DATABASE_NAME
source <(clever addon env addon ADDON_ID -F shell)
redis-cli -h $KV_HOST -p $KV_PORT --tls PING

Here is an example of what you can expect:

$ clever addon create kv testKV

Add-on created successfully!
ID: addon_4997cfe3-f104-4d05-9fe4-xxxxxxxxx
Real ID: kv_01HV6NCSRD1TV2AJW4RKFBJ07R
Name: testKV

/!\ The MateriaDB KV provider is in Alpha testing phase, don't store sensitive or production grade data
You can easily use MateriaDB KV with 'redis-cli', with such commands:
source <(clever addon env addon_4997cfe3-f104-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxx -F shell)
redis-cli -h $KV_HOST -p $KV_PORT --tls

You can also deploy MateriaDB KV add-ons with Terraform provider (OpenTofu compatible).

Using the Redis API compatible layer

Environment variables and CLI usage

To connect to a MateriaDB KV add-on, you need 3 parameters: the host, the port and a (biscuit based) token. You can set these parameters as environment variables by doing source <(clever addon env addon ADDON_ID -F shell). The variables set are:

• $KV_HOST and its alias $REDIS_HOST
• $KV_PORT and its alias $REDIS_PORT
• $KV_TOKEN and its alias $REDIS_PASSWORD
• $REDIS_CLI_URL
• $REDISCLI_AUTH

You can directly use these environment variables to connect to a MateriaDB KV add-on using redis-cli if REDISCLI_AUTH is set:

redis-cli -h $KV_HOST -p $KV_PORT --tls

MateriaDB KV is also compatible with alternatives such as iredis.

Fish shell users

If you use the Fish shell, you can use the following command to set the environment variables:

clever addon env ADDON_ID -F shell | source

Supported types and commands

During this alpha stage, we don’t provide 100% compatibility with the Redis API. Curently supported value types are:

• Hash
• List
• String

Find below the list of currently supported commands: