# Redis Sentinel

The [Redis Sentinel](https://redis.io/docs/management/sentinel/) object of node-redis provides a high level object that provides access to a high availability redis installation managed by Redis Sentinel to provide enumeration of master and replica nodes belonging to an installation as well as reconfigure itself on demand for failover and topology changes.

## Basic Example

```javascript
import { createSentinel } from 'redis';

const sentinel = await createSentinel({
    name: 'sentinel-db',
    sentinelRootNodes: [{
      host: 'example',
      port: 1234
    }]
  })
  .on('error', err => console.error('Redis Sentinel Error', err))
  .connect();

await sentinel.set('key', 'value');
const value = await sentinel.get('key');
await sentinel.close();
```

In the above example, we configure the sentinel object to fetch the configuration for the database Redis Sentinel is monitoring as "sentinel-db" with one of the sentinels being located at `example:1234`, then using it like a regular Redis client.

## `createSentinel` configuration

| Property                   | Default   | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           |
|----------------------------|-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| name                       |           | The sentinel identifier for a particular database cluster                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             |
| sentinelRootNodes          |           | An array of root nodes that are part of the sentinel cluster, which will be used to get the topology. Each element in the array is a client configuration object. There is no need to specify every node in the cluster: 3 should be enough to reliably connect and obtain the sentinel configuration from the server |
| maxCommandRediscovers      | `16`      | The maximum number of times a command will retry due to topology changes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             |
| nodeClientOptions          |           | The configuration values for every node in the cluster. Use this for example when specifying an ACL user to connect with                                                                                                                                                                                              |
| sentinelClientOptions      |           | The configuration values for every sentinel in the cluster. Use this for example when specifying an ACL user to connect with                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| masterPoolSize             | `1`       | The number of clients connected to the master node                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    |
| replicaPoolSize            | `0`       | The number of clients connected to each replica node. When greater than 0, the client will distribute the load by executing read-only commands (such as `GET`, `GEOSEARCH`, etc.) across all the cluster nodes.                                                                                                       |
| scanInterval               | `10000`   | Interval in milliseconds to periodically scan for changes in the sentinel topology. The client will query the sentinel for changes at this interval.                                                                                                                                                                 |
| passthroughClientErrorEvents | `false` | When `true`, error events from client instances inside the sentinel will be propagated to the sentinel instance. This allows handling all client errors through a single error handler on the sentinel instance.                                                                                                     |
| reserveClient              | `false`   | When `true`, one client will be reserved for the sentinel object. When `false`, the sentinel object will wait for the first available client from the pool.                                                                                                                                                           |

## PubSub

It supports PubSub via the normal mechanisms, including migrating the listeners if the node they are connected to goes down.

```javascript
await sentinel.subscribe('channel', message => {
  // ...
});
await sentinel.unsubscribe('channel');
```

see [the PubSub guide](./pub-sub.md) for more details.

## Sentinel as a pool

The sentinel object provides the ability to manage a pool of clients for the master node:

```javascript
createSentinel({
  // ...
  masterPoolSize: 10
});
```

In addition, it also provides the ability have a pool of clients connected to the replica nodes, and to direct all read-only commands to them:

```javascript
createSentinel({
  // ...
  replicaPoolSize: 10
});
```

## Master client lease

Sometimes multiple commands needs to run on an exclusive client (for example, using `WATCH/MULTI/EXEC`).

There are 2 ways to get a client lease:

`.use()`
```javascript
const result = await sentinel.use(async client => {
  await client.watch('key');
  return client.multi()
    .get('key')
    .exec();
});
```

`.acquire()`
```javascript
const clientLease = await sentinel.acquire();

try {
  await clientLease.watch('key');
  const resp = await clientLease.multi()
    .get('key')
    .exec();
} finally {
  clientLease.release();
}
```