Wouldn't Kubernetes and/or Dapr just add even more latency before the packets reach Redis?

It seems like the parent comment's author is implying that Redis is already too slow even when running it on bare metal and connecting directly to it.

Adding additional things like service discovery and proxies in the network path will not speed it up. To speed it up you would need to bring Redis closer, so perhaps you meant using k8 tools like "pod topology spread contraints" to do so (juxtaposing with the default k8 behavior that may spread workloads out in an undesirable manner)?

Simply going from "we are not using k8s" to "we are using k8s" won't speed up latency to Redis.