Memcached Integration
Monitor cache hit/miss ratios, eviction rates, memory utilization, and connection health across your Memcached clusters. Correlate cache behavior with application response times.
How It Works
Deploy the Memcached Exporter
Run the TigerOps Memcached exporter as a sidecar or standalone container. It connects to each Memcached node via the ASCII stats protocol — no modifications to Memcached itself required.
Discover Nodes Automatically
For ElastiCache clusters, the exporter uses the configuration endpoint to auto-discover all nodes. For standalone deployments, provide a comma-separated list of host:port pairs.
Set Hit Rate Baselines
TigerOps observes your normal hit rate patterns and sets adaptive alert thresholds. Alerts fire when the hit rate drops below your baseline, indicating cold cache, capacity issues, or traffic shifts.
Correlate Cache Misses With Latency
TigerOps correlates Memcached miss spikes with application trace latency, identifying which service endpoints are most impacted and whether the root cause is eviction pressure or capacity.
What You Get Out of the Box
Hit/Miss Ratio Tracking
Per-node and aggregate get hit/miss ratios with trend analysis. TigerOps fires pre-emptive alerts when the hit rate trend indicates cache warming or capacity degradation.
Eviction Rate Monitoring
Track evictions per second and cumulative eviction counts per node. TigerOps correlates eviction spikes with memory limit settings and recommends cluster resizing.
Memory Utilization
Used vs. limit bytes, slab class allocation, and fragmentation ratio per node. Identify inefficient key distribution causing wasted slab space and premature evictions.
Connection & Thread Metrics
Current and max connections, connection rejected counts, and worker thread utilization. Detect connection exhaustion before it cascades to application timeouts.
Command Throughput
Get, set, delete, and CAS command rates per node and per cluster. Identify write-heavy workloads causing premature evictions or churn in frequently accessed keys.
Network Bytes & Bandwidth
Bytes read and written per second per node. TigerOps alerts on bandwidth saturation and correlates network-heavy operations with application request patterns.
Memcached Exporter Config
Deploy the TigerOps Memcached exporter alongside your cluster to collect and forward stats protocol metrics.
# TigerOps Memcached Exporter — docker-compose.yml
services:
tigerops-memcached-exporter:
image: atatus/memcached-exporter:latest
environment:
# Comma-separated list of Memcached nodes
MEMCACHED_ADDRS: "memcached-1:11211,memcached-2:11211"
# For ElastiCache auto-discovery, use the config endpoint:
# MEMCACHED_CONFIG_ENDPOINT: "cluster.abc123.cfg.use1.cache.amazonaws.com:11211"
TIGEROPS_ENDPOINT: "https://ingest.atatus.net/api/v1/write"
TIGEROPS_API_KEY: "${TIGEROPS_API_KEY}"
# Collection interval in seconds
SCRAPE_INTERVAL: "15"
# Enable SASL auth if required (ElastiCache with TLS)
# MEMCACHED_SASL_USERNAME: "${MEMCACHED_USER}"
# MEMCACHED_SASL_PASSWORD: "${MEMCACHED_PASSWORD}"
ports:
- "9150:9150"
restart: unless-stopped
---
# Telegraf alternative — inputs.memcached
[[inputs.memcached]]
servers = ["memcached-1:11211", "memcached-2:11211"]
# unix_sockets = ["/var/run/memcached.sock"]
[[outputs.http]]
url = "https://ingest.atatus.net/api/v1/write"
data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"
[outputs.http.headers]
"X-TigerOps-API-Key" = "${TIGEROPS_API_KEY}"Common Questions
Does TigerOps support AWS ElastiCache for Memcached?
Yes. TigerOps supports both self-hosted Memcached and AWS ElastiCache Memcached clusters. For ElastiCache, it uses the cluster configuration endpoint to auto-discover all nodes and collects CloudWatch metrics alongside the native stats protocol data.
Can TigerOps detect when Memcached is close to its memory limit?
Yes. TigerOps monitors the bytes_used / limit_maxbytes ratio in real time and forecasts memory exhaustion using AI-driven trend analysis. Alerts fire before eviction rates spike, giving you time to resize before users are impacted.
How does TigerOps connect to Memcached without modifying the server?
The TigerOps exporter uses the standard Memcached ASCII stats protocol (the STATS command) over TCP. No plugins or configuration changes to Memcached are needed. The exporter connects from within your private network using the host and port you configure.
Does TigerOps support SASL authentication for Memcached?
Yes. The TigerOps exporter supports SASL PLAIN authentication for Memcached clusters that require it, including ElastiCache configurations with in-transit encryption and auth enabled.
Can I see which keys are being evicted most frequently?
Memcached does not expose per-key eviction data natively. TigerOps provides slab-class-level eviction rates, which identify the key size ranges under the most memory pressure. For key-level visibility, we recommend pairing with the TigerOps APM SDK to track cache key patterns at the application layer.
Full Visibility Into Your Memcached Layer
No credit card required. Connect in minutes. Hit rates, evictions, and memory metrics immediately.