Azure Managed Redis Migration Gets Smarter with Datadog and Eden
Microsoft is retiring Azure Cache for Redis, and teams across the industry are now planning their move to Azure Managed Redis. The new platform is a fully managed, Microsoft first-party in-memory data store. It brings Redis Enterprise capabilities including RediSearch, RedisJSON, RedisTimeSeries, and Active Geo-Replication. For many teams, the Azure Managed Redis migration promises better performance, lower cost, and modern support for AI workloads.
However, cache migrations carry real risk. Redis typically handles latency-sensitive user requests. An undersized cache, a misconfigured client, or a forgotten dependent service can trigger immediate outages. That is where Datadog and Eden step in.
Together, the two platforms cover the full Azure Managed Redis migration lifecycle. Datadog delivers unified observability across both the legacy cache and the new deployment. Eden, meanwhile, handles data replication, traffic routing, dual-write consistency, and instant rollback through its migration layer, Exodus.
Before teams migrate, Datadog’s Azure Cache for Redis integration and Redis integration capture the baseline metrics needed for accurate sizing. Teams should focus on peak operations per second, p99 cache latency, working set size, hit rate, and connection counts. These figures determine the right configuration for the new instance and help avoid the cost trap of over-provisioning. Saving these baselines as Datadog notebooks keeps them accessible throughout the migration.
Once baselines are set, Eden’s Exodus layer takes over data movement. It sits in front of both caches, replicates data to the new Azure Managed Redis instance, and shifts traffic without requiring any application changes or maintenance windows. Teams can choose from canary, blue/green, tenant-by-tenant, or big bang cutover strategies. Exodus also mirrors writes to both caches during cutover and throttles adaptively to prevent load spikes on either side.
During cutover, the biggest risk is not data loss, it is the applications that depend on the cache. In a microservices environment, dozens of services often share a single cache. Datadog’s Software Catalog and APM traces help teams identify every dependent service and track whether each one migrates correctly. As traffic shifts, side-by-side Datadog dashboards show both caches simultaneously. Teams can tag environments clearly, for example, cache:legacy and cache:managed-redis, so a single widget captures the transition in real time.
Three short-lived monitors should run during the migration window: a latency divergence monitor, an error-rate divergence monitor, and a hit-rate divergence monitor. Each one catches a distinct class of regression early enough to allow a rollback. Teams should delete these monitors once the cutover completes.
Validation does not end when traffic shifts. After the Azure Managed Redis migration, teams should compare p95 and p99 latency, hit rate, memory utilization, and eviction rate against the pre-migration baselines using the Azure Managed Redis Overview dashboard. A persistent hit-rate gap usually points to TTL misconfiguration. A high eviction rate signals that the cache needs scaling before performance degrades further.
Post-migration health depends on continuous monitoring. Datadog recommends configuring monitors for saturation, efficiency, memory pressure, and geo-replication health. When an alert fires, APM traces and surrounding logs are all available in the same workspace, making root cause analysis faster.
As an official Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework partner, Datadog supports Azure migrations across Redis, compute, storage, and other services. Teams can read the Azure Managed Redis integration documentation for setup details, and visit Eden’s Redis migration page to start a migration.
