Chainguard Image for valkey

Minimalist Wolfi-based Valkey image.

Chainguard Images are regularly-updated, minimal container images with low-to-zero CVEs.

Download this Image

This image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/valkey:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard registry.

Minimalist Wolfi-based Valkey image.

Valkey is an open source (BSD) high-performance key/value datastore that supports a variety workloads such as caching, message queues, and can act as a primary database. Valkey can run as either a standalone daemon or in a cluster, with options for replication and high availability.

The data model is key-value, but many different kind of values are supported: Strings, Lists, Sets, Sorted Sets, Hashes, Streams, HyperLogLogs, Bitmaps.

• Documentation
• Provenance Information

Image Variants

Our latest tag use the most recent build of the Wolfi Valkey package. The latest tagged variant is a distroless image for running Valkey.

Valkey Version

This will automatically pull the image to your local system and execute the command valkey --version:

docker run --rm cgr.dev/chainguard/valkey --version

You should see output similar to this:

valkey server v=7.0.8 sha=00000000:0 malloc=libc bits=64 build=736cb94cbb0b299

Using Valkey

The default Valkey port is 6379. To run with Docker using default configuration:

docker run -p 6379:6379 --rm cgr.dev/chainguard/valkey
1:C 18 Apr 2024 00:52:45.176 # WARNING Memory overcommit must be enabled! Without it, a background save or replication may fail under low memory condition. To fix this issue add 'vm.overcommit_memory = 1' to /etc/sysctl.conf and then reboot or run the command 'sysctl vm.overcommit_memory=1' for this to take effect.
1:C 18 Apr 2024 00:52:45.176 * oO0OoO0OoO0Oo Valkey is starting oO0OoO0OoO0Oo
1:C 18 Apr 2024 00:52:45.176 * Valkey version=7.2.5, bits=64, commit=26388270, modified=1, pid=1, just started
1:C 18 Apr 2024 00:52:45.176 # Warning: no config file specified, using the default config. In order to specify a config file use /usr/bin/valkey-server /path/to/valkey.conf
1:M 18 Apr 2024 00:52:45.177 * monotonic clock: POSIX clock_gettime
                .+^+.                                                
            .+#########+.                                            
        .+########+########+.           Valkey 7.2.5 (26388270/1) 64 bit
    .+########+'     '+########+.                                    
 .########+'     .+.     '+########.    Running in standalone mode
 |####+'     .+#######+.     '+####|    Port: 6379
 |###|   .+###############+.   |###|    PID: 1                     
 |###|   |#####*'' ''*#####|   |###|                                 
 |###|   |####'  .-.  '####|   |###|                                 
 |###|   |###(  (@@@)  )###|   |###|          https://valkey.io      
 |###|   |####.  '-'  .####|   |###|                                 
 |###|   |#####*.   .*#####|   |###|                                 
 |###|   '+#####|   |#####+'   |###|                                 
 |####+.     +##|   |#+'     .+####|                                 
 '#######+   |##|        .+########'                                 
    '+###|   |##|    .+########+'                                    
        '|   |####+########+'                                        
             +#########+'                                            
                '+v+'                                                

1:M 18 Apr 2024 00:52:45.177 * Server initialized
1:M 18 Apr 2024 00:52:45.177 * Ready to accept connections tcp

Users and Directories

By default this image runs as a non-root user named valkey with a uid of 65532. Valkey does not have a default data directory, it defaults to whatever the working directory is for the process. We provide a default WORKDIR of /data that is writeable by the valkey user.

If you supply a different configuration file or change the user, UID, or WORKDIR, you'll need to ensure the user running the valkey process has permissions to write to that directory.

When running in Docker using a volume, that should also be taken care of automatically. Here's an example of using a host volume:

% docker run -d -v $(pwd):/data -p 6379:6379 cgr.dev/chainguard/valkey
d029bfb291c7a00618342ab26702dc3788cfda24b85208de04464ccb06681797
$ valkey-cli set foo bar
OK
$ valkey-cli save
OK
$ valkey-cli get foo
"bar"
$ docker kill d029bfb291c7a00618342ab26702dc3788cfda24b85208de04464ccb06681797
d029bfb291c7a00618342ab26702dc3788cfda24b85208de04464ccb06681797
$ docker run -d -v $(pwd):/data -p 6379:6379 cgr.dev/chainguard/valkey
29845f88b862d8e337cf8183e8fb6ac1bd9b43c4ec2de37111bfe08b227e1caa
$ valkey-cli get foo
"bar"

Contact Support

If you have a Zendesk account (typically set up for you by your Customer Success Manager) you can reach out to Chainguard's Customer Success team through our Zendesk portal.

What are Chainguard Images?

Chainguard Images are a collection of container images designed for security and minimalism.

Many Chainguard Images are distroless; they contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These images do not even contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Images are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Images include:

• Minimal design, with no unnecessary software bloat
• Automated nightly builds to ensure Images are completely up-to-date and contain all available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs (software bills of materials) attesting the provenance of all artifacts within the Image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

-dev Variants

As mentioned previously, Chainguard’s distroless Images have no shell or package manager by default. This is great for security, but sometimes you need these things, especially in builder images. For those cases, most (but not all) Chainguard Images come paired with a -dev variant which does include a shell and package manager.

Although the -dev image variants have similar security features as their distroless versions, such as complete SBOMs and signatures, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. The general recommendation is to use the -dev variants only to build the application and then copy all application artifacts into a distroless image, which will result in a final container image that has a minimal attack surface and won’t allow package installations or logins.

That being said, it’s worth noting that -dev variants of Chainguard Images are completely fine to run in production environments. After all, the -dev variants are still more secure than many popular container images based on fully-featured operating systems such as Debian and Ubuntu since they carry less software, follow a more frequent patch cadence, and offer attestations for what they include.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Images, we encourage you to visit Chainguard Academy, our documentation and education platform.