Valkey cluster monitoring
A cluster fails differently than a single instance: hot slots, lagging replicas, stuck migrations, split-brain. Valkey 8.0 made much of this directly observable for the first time - if your tooling reads it.
What to monitor in a Valkey cluster
Topology & roles
Which nodes are primaries, which replicas follow whom, and whether every node agrees on the cluster state.
Slot coverage & distribution
All 16,384 slots assigned, and keys spread evenly - or one shard quietly holding half the keyspace.
Per-slot load
Reads, writes, key counts, and CPU time per slot (CLUSTER SLOT-STATS, Valkey 8.0+). The only way to see a hot slot rather than infer it.
Migrations & resharding
Slot migrations in progress, their pace, and their effect on latency.
Replication health
Replica lag, broken links, and replicas that stopped following.
Failovers & safety
Node failovers, split-brain conditions, and quorum risks - state changes, not statistical spikes.
How BetterDB monitors clusters
Topology graphs
Live cluster visualization: nodes, roles, slot ranges, and health at a glance, with per-node performance stats.
SLOT-STATS heatmaps
Per-slot key counts, reads, writes, and CPU rendered as heatmaps (Valkey 8.0+), plus Prometheus series for the top slots - so hotspot detection and resharding decisions are data-driven.
Cluster-wide slowlog
Slowlogs aggregated across every node into one queryable view, instead of node-by-node SLOWLOG GET.
Safety detectors
State-change anomaly detectors for failovers, split-brain, and stuck replicas (Pro, free in early access) - conditions a Z-score on a single metric can never see.
FAQ
What is CLUSTER SLOT-STATS?
CLUSTER SLOT-STATS is a Valkey 8.0+ command that reports per-slot statistics in cluster mode: key count, expiring keys, total reads, total writes, and CPU time per slot. It makes hot slots directly observable instead of inferred, and supports data-driven resharding. Redis does not have this command; BetterDB renders it as heatmaps and exports Prometheus metrics for the top slots.
How do I find a hot slot or hot shard in Valkey?
On Valkey 8.0+, read CLUSTER SLOT-STATS ordered by reads, writes, or CPU - BetterDB visualizes this as a heatmap and keeps history, so you can see when the hotspot appeared. Combined with hot-key tracking, you can usually go from "this shard is hot" to "this key pattern is responsible" in one investigation.
Does BetterDB monitor Redis Cluster too?
Yes. Topology visualization, per-node stats, cluster-wide slowlog aggregation, and failover detection work on Redis 6+ clusters. The per-slot SLOT-STATS views are Valkey 8.0+ exclusive, and the UI degrades gracefully when the capability is absent.
Does BetterDB support Sentinel deployments?
Yes, Sentinel-managed topologies are supported alongside cluster mode. Note that when connecting through an SSH tunnel, cluster and Sentinel monitoring fan out to other nodes using their advertised addresses directly - so per-node views require network reachability to those nodes.
What cluster metrics should I alert on?
The high-signal ones: slot coverage incomplete, failover events, replication link down or lag growing, split-brain indicators, and sustained per-slot CPU concentration. BetterDB raises these as diagnosed anomalies and exposes the underlying data as Prometheus metrics for your existing Alertmanager.
Point it at any cluster node - it discovers the rest
Ready to get started?
Start monitoring in minutes - no infrastructure to maintain. Team collaboration, agent-based monitoring for private databases, and more. Or self-host - open source core, zero lock-in.