[kijin]

My point is that I don't see much reason to run a server the sole purpose of which is to perform consistent hashing. I have no complaints about using the client library as part of a Python program. Actually, apologies to OP because I didn't realize that this is like the first Redis client library in Python with consistent hashing built in.

But a standalone server to talk to other languages such as PHP? Why would I want to add yet another TCP connection, yet another point of failure, and yet another protocol to my software stack when PHP's very own Predis, for example, does consistent hashing just fine while talking to Redis directly? Many other languages like Ruby, Java, and C#/.NET also have Redis clients that support consistent hashing. Sorry Pythonists, everyone else has been having fun with turnkey consistent hashing for 3-4 years already.

Lossless sharding came to mind immediately as a possible benefit of a middle layer, because Redis users have been asking for something like that for ages. When someone says "Redis" and "sharding" in the same breath, I'm sure a lot of people will think "Finally, a way to distribute my larger-than-RAM dataset across multiple machines!" After all, durability is a big deal when it comes to Redis. I'm sorry if my comment came across as rude, but I was honestly quite disappointed because my expectations were probably too high.