Since Redis 2.8.x keyOps#getExpire() returns -2 for empty collections (RedisList/RedisSet/RedisMap). We're now adding a dummy entry to keep the test version agnostic. Previously getExpire() returned -1. We also have to set the RedisAtomic(Integer|Long) to a value other than 0 to get the value stored appropriately. For reference see the discussion in http://redis.io/commands/ttl