Redis Cluster a pragmatic approach to distribution All nodes are directly connected with a service channel. TCP baseport+4000, example 6379 -> 10379. Node to Node protocol is binary, optimized for bandwidth and speed. Clients talk to nodes as usually, using ascii protocol, with minor additions. Nodes don't proxy queries. What nodes talk about? PING: are you ok dude? I'm master for XYZ hash slots. Config is FF89X1JK Gossip: this are info about other nodes I'm in touch with: A replies to my ping, I think its state is OK. B is idle, I guess it's having problems but I need some ACK. PONG: Sure I'm ok dude! I'm master for XYZ hash slots. Config is FF89X1JK Gossip: I want to share with you some info about random nodes: C and D are fine and replied in time. But B is idle for me as well! IMHO it's down!. Hash slots keyspace is divided into 4096 hash slots. But in this example we'll assume they are just ten, from 0 to 9 ;) Different