Location of the ASP.NET Cache

Question

How/where is the ASP.NET cache managed in IIS 7? I know that it's stored in the server's memory, but what is the process that manages it? Is it in the address space of w3wp.exe, or is it in another process/location? And does Session data use the cache, or does Session work differently?

Answer 1

You configure where Session data gets stored in your web.config with the sessionState element. If set to InProc, it will be stored in memory in the w3wp.exe process that corresponds to your application's App Pool. You could also, for example, store it in a SQL Server instance.

If that element isn't defined in your config file, check out the machine level web.config for your target framework version / architecture.