Web caching in the Cloud

This is the buzz word now in enterprise if you are trying to implement private cloud. I think this can be confusing to an extend, is it application caching side we are talking about or are we talking about caching in cloud?

For Applications there are solution like Eh-cahce or open terracotta or Extreme scale from IBM are some good solution.

Web application performance can be improved by caching frequently‐accessed data in high‐speed memory, instead of in databases, they can dramatically reduce response times, economically scale their sites, and substantially reduce the load placed on their databases, file servers, and other information sources.

Now lets talk about web caching in the cloud and some player in this space. Memchached and Gear6 (which provides enhanced solution)

The open‐source distributed cache system Memcached has quickly become the standard for web caching, particularly for operators of dynamic, high‐growth web sites. Memcached stores frequently‐used data in DRAM instead of in databases, providing response time improvements of 100x or more.

It is not surprising that many large organizations are interested in both cloud computing and Memcached web caching, since they offer complementary advantages in cost savings, flexibility and ease of management. But they too have evolved in different communities, largely in isolation from one another, and they do not operate together as seamlessly as might be desired.

As an example, the ability to rapidly scale applications up or down in size is a key advantage of cloud computing, but standard Memcached does not accommodate it very well. Changing the size of a Memcached cache tier causes the cache data to be flushed and then rebuilt, this typically causes degradation in site performance, and causes spikes in the demands on source databases and file servers. Rebuilding the contents of a large cache tier can take hours, and site performance may not be restored to normal until the end of the rebuilding process.

You can read more about Memcahed and Gear6 and MemCahed can be dowloaded from

Download MemChached