ElastiCache best practices and caching strategies

Below you can find recommended best practices for Amazon ElastiCache. Following these improves your cache's performance and reliability.

TLS enabled dual stack ElastiCache clusters

When TLS is enabled for ElastiCache clusters the cluster discovery functions (cluster slots, cluster shards, and cluster nodes for Redis) or config get cluster for Memcached return hostnames instead of IPs. The hostnames are then used instead of IPs to connect to the ElastiCache cluster and perform a TLS handshake. This means that clients won't be affected by the IP Discovery parameter. For TLS enabled clusters the IP Discovery parameter has no effect on the preferred IP protocol. Instead, the IP protocol used will be determined by which IP protocol the client prefers when resolving DNS hostnames.

Java clients

When connecting from a Java environment that supports both IPv4 and IPv6, Java will by default prefer IPv4 over IPv6 for backwards compatibility. However, the IP protocol preference is configurable through the JVM arguments. To prefer IPv4, the JVM accepts -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true and to prefer IPv6 set -Djava.net.preferIPv6Stack=true. Setting -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true means that the JVM will no longer make any IPv6 connections. For Valkey or Redis OSS, this includes those to other non-Valkey and non-Redis OSS applications.

Host Level Preferences

In general, if the client or client runtime don't provide configuration options for setting an IP protocol preference, when performing DNS resolution, the IP protocol will depend on the host's configuration. By default, most hosts prefer IPv6 over IPv4 but this preference can be configured at the host level. This will affect all DNS requests from that host, not just those to ElastiCache clusters.

Linux hosts

For Linux, an IP protocol preference can be configured by modifying the gai.conf file. The gai.conf file can be found under /etc/gai.conf. If there is no gai.conf specified then an example one should be available under /usr/share/doc/glibc-common-x.xx/gai.conf which can be copied to /etc/gai.conf and then the default configuration should be un-commented. To update the configuration to prefer IPv4 when connecting to an ElastiCache cluster update the precedence for the CIDR range encompassing the cluster IPs to be above the precedence for default IPv6 connections. By default IPv6 connections have a precedence of 40. For example, assuming the cluster is located in a subnet with the CIDR 172.31.0.0:0/16, the configuration below would cause clients to prefer IPv4 connections to that cluster.

label ::1/128       0
label ::/0          1
label 2002::/16     2
label ::/96         3
label ::ffff:0:0/96 4
label fec0::/10     5
label fc00::/7      6
label 2001:0::/32   7
label ::ffff:172.31.0.0/112 8
#
#    This default differs from the tables given in RFC 3484 by handling
#    (now obsolete) site-local IPv6 addresses and Unique Local Addresses.
#    The reason for this difference is that these addresses are never
#    NATed while IPv4 site-local addresses most probably are.  Given
#    the precedence of IPv6 over IPv4 (see below) on machines having only
#    site-local IPv4 and IPv6 addresses a lookup for a global address would
#    see the IPv6 be preferred.  The result is a long delay because the
#    site-local IPv6 addresses cannot be used while the IPv4 address is
#    (at least for the foreseeable future) NATed.  We also treat Teredo
#    tunnels special.
#
# precedence  <mask>   <value>
#    Add another rule to the RFC 3484 precedence table.  See section 2.1
#    and 10.3 in RFC 3484.  The default is:
#
precedence  ::1/128       50
precedence  ::/0          40
precedence  2002::/16     30
precedence ::/96          20
precedence ::ffff:0:0/96  10
precedence ::ffff:172.31.0.0/112 100

More details on gai.conf are available on the Linux main page

Windows hosts

The process for Windows hosts is similar. For Windows hosts you can run netsh interface ipv6 set prefix CIDR_CONTAINING_CLUSTER_IPS PRECEDENCE LABEL. This has the same effect as modifying the gai.conf file on Linux hosts.

This will update the preference policies to prefer IPv4 connections over IPv6 connections for the specified CIDR range. For example, assuming that the cluster is in a subnet with the 172.31.0.0:0/16 CIDR executing netsh interface ipv6 set prefix ::ffff:172.31.0.0:0/112 100 15 would result in the following precedence table which would cause clients to prefer IPv4 when connecting to the cluster.

C:\Users\Administrator>netsh interface ipv6 show prefixpolicies
Querying active state...

Precedence Label Prefix
---------- ----- --------------------------------
100 15 ::ffff:172.31.0.0:0/112
20 4 ::ffff:0:0/96
50 0 ::1/128
40 1 ::/0
30 2 2002::/16
5 5 2001::/32
3 13 fc00::/7
1 11 fec0::/10
1 12 3ffe::/16
1 3 ::/96