Quick note before we dive in: everything here is based on my personal experience. Your mileage may vary, but these principles have been consistent across every project I have worked on.
Background
Before I get into the results, you need to understand the starting point. Every case study that skips context is useless because you cannot assess whether the results apply to your situation.
The messy middle
Getting started is easy. Getting to production-ready is hard. The difference is in the details that nobody blogs about because they are boring. But boring is what keeps systems running at 3 AM.
Results
Numbers. Real, unembellished numbers. I am including the failures alongside the successes because cherry-picking wins is dishonest and unhelpful.
What I would do differently
Hindsight is 20/20, but some lessons only become clear after the fact. If I were starting from scratch today, here is what I would change.
TL;DR: start simple, measure everything, iterate based on data not feelings. The Dev.to, Redis Documentation docs are worth reading if you want to go deeper. Also worth checking: agntbox.com, clawseo.net.