Python uses a reference counter mechanism to deal with objects, so at the end of the blocks, the my_server object will be automatically destroyed and the connection closed. You do not need to close it explicitly.

Now this is not how you are supposed to manage Redis connections. Connecting/disconnecting for each operation is too expensive, so it is much better to maintain the connection opened. With redis-py it can be done by declaring a pool of connections:

import redis

POOL = redis.ConnectionPool(host='10.0.0.1', port=6379, db=0)

def getVariable(variable_name):
    my_server = redis.Redis(connection_pool=POOL)
    response = my_server.get(variable_name)
    return response

def setVariable(variable_name, variable_value):
    my_server = redis.Redis(connection_pool=POOL)
    my_server.set(variable_name, variable_value)

Please note connection pool management is mostly automatic and done within redis-py.