CLIENT PAUSE timeout

Available since 2.9.50.

Time complexity: O(1)

CLIENT PAUSE is a connections control command able to suspend all the Redis clients for the specified amount of time (in milliseconds).

The command performs the following actions:

• It stops processing all the pending commands from normal and pub/sub clients. However interactions with replicas will continue normally.
• However it returns OK to the caller ASAP, so the CLIENT PAUSE command execution is not paused by itself.
• When the specified amount of time has elapsed, all the clients are unblocked: this will trigger the processing of all the commands accumulated in the query buffer of every client during the pause.

This command is useful as it makes able to switch clients from a Redis instance to another one in a controlled way. For example during an instance upgrade the system administrator could do the following:

• Pause the clients using CLIENT PAUSE
• Wait a few seconds to make sure the replicas processed the latest replication stream from the master.
• Turn one of the replicas into a master.
• Reconfigure clients to connect with the new master.

It is possible to send CLIENT PAUSE in a MULTI/EXEC block together with the INFO replication command in order to get the current master offset at the time the clients are blocked. This way it is possible to wait for a specific offset in the replica side in order to make sure all the replication stream was processed.

Since Redis 3.2.10 / 4.0.0, this command also prevents keys to be evicted or expired during the time clients are paused. This way the dataset is guaranteed to be static not just from the point of view of clients not being able to write, but also from the point of view of internal operations.

*Return value

Simple string reply: The command returns OK or an error if the timeout is invalid.