why does the redis memory usage not reduce when del half of keys

Question

Redis is used to save data but it costs a lot of memory, and its memory usage up to 52.5%. I deleted half of the keys in redis, and the return code of the delete operation is ok, but its memory usage doesn't reduce.

What's the reason? Thanks in Advance.

My operation code is as below:

// save data
m_pReply = (redisReply *)redisCommand(m_pCntxt, "set %b %b", mykey.data(), mykey.size(), &myval, sizeof(myval));
// del data
m_pReply = (redisReply *)redisCommand(m_pCntxt, "del %b", mykey.data(), mykey.size());

The redis info:

redis 127.0.0.1:6979> info
redis_version:2.4.8
redis_git_sha1:00000000
redis_git_dirty:0
arch_bits:64
multiplexing_api:epoll
gcc_version:4.4.6
process_id:28799
uptime_in_seconds:1289592
uptime_in_days:14
lru_clock:127925
used_cpu_sys:148455.30
used_cpu_user:38023.92
used_cpu_sys_children:23187.60
used_cpu_user_children:123989.72
connected_clients:22
connected_slaves:0
client_longest_output_list:0
client_biggest_input_buf:0
blocked_clients:0
used_memory:31903334872
used_memory_human:29.71G
used_memory_rss:34414981120
used_memory_peak:34015653264
used_memory_peak_human:31.68G
mem_fragmentation_ratio:1.08
mem_allocator:jemalloc-2.2.5
loading:0
aof_enabled:0
changes_since_last_save:177467
bgsave_in_progress:0
last_save_time:1343456339
bgrewriteaof_in_progress:0
total_connections_received:820
total_commands_processed:2412759064
expired_keys:0
evicted_keys:0
keyspace_hits:994257907
keyspace_misses:32760132
pubsub_channels:0
pubsub_patterns:0
latest_fork_usec:11672476
vm_enabled:0
role:slave
master_host:192.168.252.103
master_port:6479
master_link_status:up
master_last_io_seconds_ago:0
master_sync_in_progress:0
db0:keys=66372158,expires=0

Answer 1

Please refer to Memory allocation section on the following link:

http://redis.io/topics/memory-optimization

I quoted it here:

Redis will not always free up (return) memory to the OS when keys are removed. This is not something special about Redis, but it is how most malloc() implementations work. For example if you fill an instance with 5GB worth of data, and then remove the equivalent of 2GB of data, the Resident Set Size (also known as the RSS, which is the number of memory pages consumed by the process) will probably still be around 5GB, even if Redis will claim that the user memory is around 3GB. This happens because the underlying allocator can't easily release the memory. For example often most of the removed keys were allocated in the same pages as the other keys that still exist.