What is Sentinel and Cluster in FalkorDB

FalkorDB is a fork of RedisGraph, and under the hood it runs on Redis. That’s why you see references to Sentinel.

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🔹 What is is_sentinel?

• It’s usually a configuration flag/parameter in client libraries (Python, Node, etc.) when connecting to Redis/FalkorDB.

• is_sentinel=True tells the driver:

“Don’t connect directly to a single Redis instance. Instead, connect to a Redis Sentinel node to discover the master/replica topology.”

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🔹 What is a Sentinel Connection?

Redis Sentinel is a high-availability (HA) system for Redis.

• It monitors Redis instances.

• Automatically handles failover (if master goes down, promote a replica).

• Provides service discovery for clients.

So in FalkorDB:

• If you deploy in standalone mode, you connect directly (no Sentinel).

• If you deploy in HA mode (with replication & failover), you connect through Sentinel, and the driver will auto-route queries to the current master.

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🔹 Example (Python FalkorDB client)

from redis.sentinel import Sentinel

# Connect to Sentinel

sentinel = Sentinel([('localhost', 26379)], socket_timeout=0.1)

# Get master connection

master = sentinel.master_for('mymaster', password="yourpassword", db=0)

# Get replica connection (read-only queries can go here)

replica = sentinel.slave_for('mymaster', password="yourpassword", db=0)

# Use master to run queries (FalkorDB graph calls are still Redis commands)

print(master.execute_command("GRAPH.QUERY", "MyGraph", "MATCH (n) RETURN n"))

Here:

• "mymaster" = name of the Redis master group managed by Sentinel.

• Sentinel runs separately (usually on port 26379).

• is_sentinel=True just signals to use this connection mode.

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🔑 Summary

• is_sentinel → flag to tell the driver to connect via Redis Sentinel.

• Sentinel connection → allows HA setup (failover, replication, service discovery) in FalkorDB just like Redis.

• Useful if you run FalkorDB in production with clustering + replicas, not needed in local/dev (single-node) setups.

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