Database / ValKey Interview questions
Explain the basic architecture of a Valkey server?
At its core, a Valkey server keeps the entire dataset in memory as a set of native data structures and serves clients over TCP using the RESP protocol.
An event loop built on OS primitives like epoll or kqueue multiplexes many client connections on a single main thread, while newer versions add a configurable pool of I/O threads to parallelize network reads/writes and protocol parsing without touching command execution itself.
flowchart LR
C[Clients] -->|RESP over TCP| IO[I/O Threads: read/parse]
IO --> M[Main Thread: command execution]
M --> D[(In-memory Data Structures)]
M --> P[Persistence: RDB / AOF]
M --> R[Replicas]
M --> OW[I/O Threads: encode/write]
OW --> C
Background housekeeping, such as the active expiration cycle and incremental hash table resizing, runs periodically from the same main thread via a routine often called the server cron.
Command execution against the dataset in Valkey's core happens on...
I/O threads in newer Valkey versions primarily help by...
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