Valkey is now included in Ubuntu

In pursuit of open source sustainability, Canonical is a committed contributor to the development of Valkey. Following our mission to amplify the impact of open source and enable a broad diversity of open source communities to collaborate under the Ubuntu umbrella, we’re pleased to announce that Valkey is now included in Ubuntu. Valkey is included in Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole) and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Nombat) and will be included in future releases. 

“This inclusion in Ubuntu 24.10 and 24.04 LTS marks a significant step forward – enabling simpler availability and continuous supportability for Valkey, the open source, in-memory data store, in the Ubuntu ecosystem.” – Christian Ehrhardt, Engineering Director of Ubuntu Server.

With Valkey now available in Ubuntu, the operating system’s user base can readily install the software directly from the Ubuntu Universe repository. We’re pleased to add Valkey to the Ubuntu ecosystem. 

What is Valkey?

Valkey is an open source (BSD 3-Clause License), high-performance key/value data store capable of supporting  workloads such as caching, in-memory database, message queueing, and leaderboards. It can operate as either a standalone server or in a cluster, offering replication options that guarantee high availability and data redundancy.

Valkey natively supports a rich collection of data types, including strings, numbers, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, hyperloglogs and more. You can operate on data structures in-place with an expressive collection of commands. Valkey also supports native extensibility with built-in scripting support for Lua and supports module plugins to create new commands, data types, and more.

Valkey use cases

Valkey can be used in many circumstances. For instance, Valkey is a suitable option if you operate an e-commerce website requiring a database to manage high traffic, an expanding product catalog, and large transaction volumes. As an in-memory database, it provides ultra fast performance, a scalable architecture, high availability, and real-time updates, making it well suited to modern web applications.

Valkey can also be used to improve query performance by caching frequently accessed data, thereby reducing the load on your primary database and ensuring faster data retrieval. Additionally, it can be used for session management, offering fast and dependable access to user sessions, and is suitable for real-time analytics to support processing and response to live data streams with minimal latency.

Get started with Valkey

Once Valkey is installed in your system (`apt-get install valkey`), its daemon will be running automatically, and your application will be able to connect and interact with it. Users can do that with Valkey’s CLI or one of the bindings for multiple programming languages we have available.

Use Valkey in the Command Line Interface (CLI):

$ valkey-cli -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 GET <variable_name> <value>
$ valkey-cli -h 127.0.0.1 -p 6379 GET <variable_name>

The options passed to the CLI above are:

• `-h`: receives the IP address of the host running the server, in this case it is localhost;
• `-p`: receives the port that the service is binded to, and by default Valkey runs on port 6379;
• `SET`: sets a key/value, and receives the key name and its value; 
• `GET`: command to read the value of a given key.

The current Valkey version in Ubuntu is fully compatible with Redis last open source version. Any  Redis library can be used to connect and interact with a Valkey server  using a python library (`apt-get install python3-redis`), for instance. 

Python
import redis as valkey
client = valkey.StrictRedis(host='127.0.0.1', port=6379)
client.set('key1', 'value1')
print('key1.value :', client.get('key1'))

Contribute to the community

Open source projects like Valkey and Ubuntu thrive because of the contributions of passionate developers, sysadmins, and users. By running Valkey on Ubuntu, you’re not only benefiting from a powerful data management system, but you’re also joining a community of like-minded individuals dedicated to improving the tool and the platform it runs on.

If you’re interested in contributing, there are several ways to get involved:

• Submit Bug Reports: If you encounter any issues while using Valkey on Ubuntu, report them to help improve the software.
• Join Discussions: Participate in community forums, mailing lists, or chat rooms to share your experiences and learn from others.
• Develop Features: If you have programming skills, consider contributing code to enhance Valkey’s features.

By contributing to the Valkey and Ubuntu communities, you’re playing a role in shaping the future of these projects, ensuring they remain powerful, secure, and accessible tools for everyone.

We look forward to seeing what you achieve with Valkey on Ubuntu. 

Additional resources

• Valkey security and support from Canonical
• Valkey Github page
• Valkey Webpage