Caching Solutions

Question

Has anyone done a thorough comparison of AppFabric and NCache or AppFabric and ScaleOut? We are currently looking to implement either AppFabric, NCache or ScaleOut for distributed caching in geographically distant locations and I would like to know anyone's thoughts who has compared them side by side. I appreciate that many people use one or the other and tell me why their chosen solution is great but I am really looking for a comparison of the two products. Such things as what does AppFabric not do or not do well (if anything), partially from a features point of view but also from developer's point of view. Is working with one compared to the other nicer, easier, more flexible, more powerful, etc.

There are plenty of lists of features which I can compare but am really looking for a comparison from someone who has perhaps been in a similar position to us and has performed the evaluation that we are about to launch into which will give us some food for thought whilst we do so.

Thanks in advance.

Silvey

+1 Good question, but with AppFabric having gone live only this week I fear there'll be nobody in a position of having done an in-depth comparison. – Kristofer

Thanks Phil, that is what I feared. There are usually a lot of smarter and keener ppl than myself out there so I am still hopeful! – Silvey

We currently have systems in place using ScaleOut's session solution and had many problems maintaining an operational state due to strange auto-configuration issues, though once we figured them out (a full year later), I must say it's run fine since. I don't know anything about either of the other solutions, though. – Hurty

Answer 1

Here is a good comparison between the features of NCache and Appfabric

Jackquelin

Answer 2

As a more mature product, NCache has a number of more advanced caching features that Velocity/AppFabric doesn't have -- check out their website for some "marketing" comparisons.

However, we have had a number of issues troubleshooting NCache and obtaining more visibility from their support/engineering team into certain behaviors of their application. Given that, plus the cost compared to AppFabric, I'm not sure I would recommend NCache at this point -- at least, we're in the process of re-evaluating our caching provider.

My frustration/complaint with Velocity/AppFabric is the the sluggishness in the release schedule. Seems like they were in CTP forever. Certainly Microsoft can crush NCache on price alone. There are now players like NorthScale (memcached) that are entering the fray which I think are also worth considering. A lot depends on what you want to use caching for in your application.

Morganatic

Answer 3

The most used one is Memcached. for sure. we currently are starting using AppFabric as our dcache, as it easily integrates into our .net solutions, and has a good feature set, that we want to use.

if you just do basic dcaching, make a abstraction of caching itself (or use the .net 4 System.Runtime.Caching.ObjectCache) so you are safe if you want to do changes. or want to stress test more solutions.

Also, depending on your App architecture, think of using more entities/instances of your DCache, as different parts maybe favor different systems.

Sclerophyll

Answer 4

It is looking like we will need more advanced functionality than what Velocity provides so it will be either NCache or ScaleOut. There are good reasons for both, we just need to sort through these. We do not have Unix resources so memcached is out. I know there is a Windows port but colleagues who know memcached tell me that it is somewhat buggy and if you are going to bother going down the memcached path, you really should make the effort to go for the Unix version.

Silvey

Re:memcached, that in itself is useful to know. Frankly it confirms my impressions (or at least my prejudices ;-) ) about memcached on Windows. – Kristofer

Answer 5

Some might argue that this is a biased comparison, but it's worth reviewing..

http://www.alachisoft.com/comparison/ncache-vs-appfabric.html

PDF has the full review.

http://www.alachisoft.com/downloads/comparison/ncache-vs-appfabric.pdf

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