I'd really recommend getting more intuition/familiar with containerization and introducing it -- it is an essential part of the modern toolkit and really isn't very hard to use these days. It will absolutely introduce/encourage idempotence and bring your dev environment just a little closer to your prod environment. Modern container runtimes can even run rootless containers, swap out the "virtualization" engine underneath (as in you can even run your container in QEMU without changing it for more isolation), so it can be a net positive for security too. There's also no need to swap out folder paths and file locations -- just moving around and disconnecting/reconnecting your data.
Containerization is actually not virualization (which is why it was in quotes ealrier), they're basically better-sandboxed local processes (just like your local redis instance), and the better sandboxing has benefits for both development and production. So if you squint, it's actually very similar to just running redis yourself on a similar OS -- just now when you shut it down you don't have to manage any folders.
Of course, use what works -- there's no need to fix things that aren't broken, but there is a reason that the defacto deployment artifact of the modern application is very quickly becoming a container (if it isn't already) -- in relatively trusted environments they give just the right amount of isolation and reproducibility, and centralized management (systemd even has space for containers via systemd-nspawn[0]).
[EDIT] - somewhat unrelated but if you haven't I'd really suggest you give GitLab a try for your source code management -- not only does it come with a free to use docker image registry, it comes with a fantastically easy CI platform which can make automated testing easier. You get 2000 free minutes a month, and actually if you bring your own hardware (which is as easy as running a container on your local machine and pointing it at gitlab.com to run your jobs for you) it's all free. There are lots of other integrations and benefits (kanban style issue boards, gitlab pages, wiki, etc), but it's one of my gotos for small projects and I introduce it to corporate clients every chance I get. Microsoft-owned Github is doing it's best to compete now that it has endless pockets, but GitLab has been offering an amazing amount of value for free for a long time now.
Containerization is actually not virualization (which is why it was in quotes ealrier), they're basically better-sandboxed local processes (just like your local redis instance), and the better sandboxing has benefits for both development and production. So if you squint, it's actually very similar to just running redis yourself on a similar OS -- just now when you shut it down you don't have to manage any folders.
Of course, use what works -- there's no need to fix things that aren't broken, but there is a reason that the defacto deployment artifact of the modern application is very quickly becoming a container (if it isn't already) -- in relatively trusted environments they give just the right amount of isolation and reproducibility, and centralized management (systemd even has space for containers via systemd-nspawn[0]).
[EDIT] - somewhat unrelated but if you haven't I'd really suggest you give GitLab a try for your source code management -- not only does it come with a free to use docker image registry, it comes with a fantastically easy CI platform which can make automated testing easier. You get 2000 free minutes a month, and actually if you bring your own hardware (which is as easy as running a container on your local machine and pointing it at gitlab.com to run your jobs for you) it's all free. There are lots of other integrations and benefits (kanban style issue boards, gitlab pages, wiki, etc), but it's one of my gotos for small projects and I introduce it to corporate clients every chance I get. Microsoft-owned Github is doing it's best to compete now that it has endless pockets, but GitLab has been offering an amazing amount of value for free for a long time now.
[0]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-nsp...