Finding replication group endpoints

An application can connect to any node in a replication group, provided that it has the DNS endpoint and port number for that node. Depending upon whether you are running a Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode disabled) or a Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode enabled) replication group, you will be interested in different endpoints.

Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode disabled)

Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode disabled) clusters with replicas have three types of endpoints; the primary endpoint, the reader endpoint and the node endpoints. The primary endpoint is a DNS name that always resolves to the primary node in the cluster. The primary endpoint is immune to changes to your cluster, such as promoting a read replica to the primary role. For write activity, we recommend that your applications connect to the primary endpoint.

A reader endpoint will evenly split incoming connections to the endpoint between all read replicas in an ElastiCache cluster. Additional factors such as when the application creates the connections or how the application (re)-uses the connections will determine the traffic distribution. Reader endpoints keep up with cluster changes in real-time as replicas are added or removed. You can place your ElastiCache (Redis OSS) cluster’s multiple read replicas in different AWS Availability Zones (AZ) to ensure high availability of reader endpoints.

For read activity, applications can also connect to any node in the cluster. Unlike the primary endpoint, node endpoints resolve to specific endpoints. If you make a change in your cluster, such as adding or deleting a replica, you must update the node endpoints in your application.

Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode enabled)

Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode enabled) clusters with replicas, because they have multiple shards (API/CLI: node groups), which mean they also have multiple primary nodes, have a different endpoint structure than Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode disabled) clusters. Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode enabled) has a configuration endpoint which "knows" all the primary and node endpoints in the cluster. Your application connects to the configuration endpoint. Whenever your application writes to or reads from the cluster's configuration endpoint, Valkey and Redis OSS, behind the scenes, determine which shard the key belongs to and which endpoint in that shard to use. It is all quite transparent to your application.

You can find the endpoints for a cluster using the ElastiCache console, the AWS CLI, or the ElastiCache API.

Finding Replication Group Endpoints

To find the endpoints for your replication group, see one of the following topics: