ASP.NET cache solution for load-balancing system

Question

We are developing an ASP.NET web application on load-balancing system. Now we are facing several problems with current cache system:

1. It is not synchronized between web servers. There are some solutions such as SQL Cache Dependency or implementing a separated Cache Service:
   • SQL Cache Dependency: it is stable but quite slow for our app
   • Separated Cache Service: it is faster but not stable because we will have bottle-neck problem. Do you have any solution for this issue?
2. When we upgrade the Database system to Clustered servers, what is the stable solution for Cache system?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Have seen NCache. It is free(the Express version. For Professional and Enterprise just Developer Machine is free ) and asp.net compatible.

NCache is an extremely fast and scalable in-memory distributed cache that caches application data . NCache also stores ASP.NET Session State Sessions in web farms. Works grate with Loadbalancer and simple to configure.

Answer 2

We use memcached and have had no problems with it. Very reliable and pretty simple to implement. What do you mean you'll have a bottle-neck problem with a third party caching solution? We've been running it for about a year or so now and have had great experience with it.

Edit: Our environment is load balanced across 3 web servers and 2 SQL servers.

The other reason I would prefer third party is because you can cache anything in it, objects, data, etc.

Setup: http://syntaxhelp.com/ASP.NET/Cache/memcache References: http://code.google.com/p/memcached/wiki/NewStart