Setting up multiple instances of Redis on a Mac

I’m using Redis on a project and couldn’t find a good guide for setting up multiple instances on a Mac. So, I decided to write up how I did it. (You might want this if you need one instance for development and a separate instance for running your test suite.)

1. Install Homebrew (great package manager for OS X)

2. Install Redis package with Homebrew

brew install redis

3. Create separate config files for your instances (in my example, a dev and a test instance).

Rename /usr/local/etc/redis.conf to /usr/local/etc/redis-dev.conf and change the following settings:

daemonize yes
pidfile /usr/local/var/run/redis-dev.pid
logfile /usr/local/var/log/redis-dev.log
dbfilename dump-dev.rdb

Copy that redis-dev.conf and save redis-test.conf and change the following settings:

pidfile /usr/local/var/run/redis-test.pid
port 6380
logfile /usr/local/var/log/redis-test.log
dbfilename dump-test.rdb

Grab this Redis Startup Item git repo and change the following settings (then follow the instructions to install):

DEV_CONF_FILE="/usr/local/etc/redis-dev.conf"
TEST_CONF_FILE="/usr/local/etc/redis-test.conf"

StartService
$REDIS $DEV_CONF_FILE
$REDIS $TEST_CONF_FILE

StopService
for pid in $(ps -o pid,command -ax | grep redis-server | awk '!/awk/ && !/grep/ {print $1}')
do
    kill -2 $pid
done

You may have to set proper ownership on the redis folder, as well:

cd /Library/StartupItems
sudo chown -R root:wheel redis/

Here are a couple links that helped me along the way:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5148390/redis-databases-on-a-dev-machine-with-multiple-projects
• http://chrislaskey.com/blog/342/running-multiple-redis-instances-on-the-same-server/