Monitoring Redis with redis-cli

Use redis-cli to monitor and manage your Redis instance directly from the command line via SSH.

redis-cli is the Redis command line interface - a simple program that lets you send commands to Redis and read the server's replies directly from the terminal.

Before you start

You need SSH access to your account to use redis-cli. If you do not have SSH access yet, please contact us and we will get that sorted for you.

You also need your Redis socket address. You can find this in cPanel under Redis:

Redis socket address in cPanel

The socket path follows this pattern:

/home/USER/.kxcache/redis.sock

Replace USER with your cPanel username throughout the examples below.

Check that Redis is running

To confirm Redis is responding, run:

redis-cli -s /home/USER/.kxcache/redis.sock PING

You should see:

PONG response from Redis

A PONG reply means Redis is up and accepting connections.

Monitor commands in real time

To watch every command Redis receives as it happens, run:

redis-cli -s /home/USER/.kxcache/redis.sock monitor

The output looks like this:

OK
1460100081.165665 [0 unix:/home/USER/.kxcache/redis.sock] "set" "foo" "bar"
1460100083.053365 [0 unix:/home/USER/.kxcache/redis.sock] "get" "foo"

You can pipe the output to filter for specific patterns, for example:

redis-cli -s /home/USER/.kxcache/redis.sock monitor | grep "set"

The monitor command logs every command received by Redis, which adds overhead. Use it for short debugging sessions rather than leaving it running continuously.

Check the number of keys in a database

The dbsize command returns the number of keys in the currently selected database.

Connect to Redis:

redis-cli -s /home/USER/.kxcache/redis.sock

Select the database you want to check (the default is 0):
```
select 0
```
Run the command:
```
dbsize
```

Redis returns the key count as an integer.

View live server statistics

The --stat flag puts redis-cli into continuous stats mode, which is one of its most useful but lesser-known features for monitoring a Redis instance in real time:

redis-cli -s /home/USER/.kxcache/redis.sock --stat

Example output:

------- data ------ --------------------- load -------------------- - child -
keys       mem      clients blocked requests             connections
22481      511.69M  3       0       549054 (+0)          71395
22481      511.75M  6       0       549083 (+29)         71401
22481      511.77M  7       0       549103 (+20)         71404
22481      511.79M  8       0       549115 (+12)         71406
22481      511.77M  7       0       549126 (+11)         71408
22481      511.71M  4       0       549132 (+6)          71409
22481      511.71M  4       0       549150 (+18)         71412
22481      511.94M  12      0       549191 (+41)         71421

The columns tell you:

keys - how many keys are stored on the server
mem - total memory in use
clients - number of connected clients
blocked - number of blocked clients
requests - total requests served (with the per-interval delta in brackets)
connections - total connections made since startup

This gives you a quick, at-a-glance overview of your Redis server's health and load.

Flush the Redis cache

To clear all keys from Redis, run:

redis-cli -s /home/USER/.kxcache/redis.sock flushall

flushall deletes every key in every database immediately and cannot be undone. Only run this if you are sure you want to clear the entire cache.

If you have other useful redis-cli commands you would like to see covered, let us know and we will be happy to add them.