Actually Redis is a bit more than a k/v store these days.  It provides implementations of a variety of basic data structures, including lists that support queue operations.  There's BLPOP[1] and BRPOP for blocking job/message requests and LPUSH and RPUSH for placing a job/message on the queue.<p>That said, I'd still like to see benchmarks showing Redis beating Beanstalkd.  Of the two, I've only used Beanstalkd, but it's a great example of keeping things simple while still providing advanced functionality.<p>_<p>1 <a href="http://code.google.com/p/redis/wiki/BlpopCommand" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/redis/wiki/BlpopCommand</a>