AppFabric Cache – Installation Modes

The AppFabric Caching service installation can be done in 3 different modes, each mode has its own function, together the 3 modes form a complete distributed caching system which can effectively handle caching in a distributed environment. AppFabric takes care of replicating the cache defined in one cache server to the other servers, so that the cache data placed in one of the servers in the cluster can be accessed from the other servers in the cache cluster.

The following are the modes in which the AppFabric caching can be installed.

Admin Mode
Caching Server Mode
Cache Client. Mode

Admin Mode
As the name suggests the Admin mode of installation is used to manage the distributed caching service as a whole, the admin module can be used to monitor the running caching clusters and cache data persistence to the database servers.

Cache Server Mode
The Cache server mode is installed in each of the cache servers in the cache cluster, this is the main component of the AppFabric distributed caching system. If you plan to use multiple caching servers, then this mode of AppFabric installation needs to be done in all the servers in the cluster.

Cache Client Mode
The Cache client mode needs to be installed in the client machines, which are nothing but the application/web server which make use of the AppFabric caching feature, this mode of installation provides the necessary assemblies and classes and methods to the client machines which can be used by the applications to connect to the cache servers.