Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service Released and notes on quotas
After an amazing amount of very fruitful work, today we are announcing our offering of cache in the cloud via the release of Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service.
The Caching service is an explicit, distributed, in-memory cache service that helps improve the performance of Windows and SQL Azure applications, by keeping distributed data in-memory and reducing the need to retrieve data from storage or database.
The most common question I get from customers is around pricing this is the MSDN page with the pricing details. Here is important to take note that beyond just selecting your required cache size, you also need to take into account the given quotas for that particular size. As you will see, each cache size has an hourly allowance for number of transactions, bandwidth and concurrent connections, this means a couple of things:
1. Some amount of calculation on transactions per hour and average size of objects will need to be understood. The transaction quota assumes an average object size of about 3.6KB so if your average objects size is larger than that then focus on your required bandwidth, as you are likely to reach the bandwidth allowance before the transaction quota.
2. Also understanding the amount of connection is essential. A common misinterpretation of this limit is to assume that this is the same as the amount of transactions your web role can handle. The number of DataCacheFactory instances along with your MaxConnectionsToServer is what will determine the amount of transactions you can accumulate. For instance, in the case of 3 web roles utilizing one datacachefactory each and with maxconnectiontoserver set to 1, there will be only 3 connection been used and they would have many transactions (get/put) going over them – we will not hit any quota limits (the smallest quota limit is 5). To get further understanding on the relation of DataCacheFactory, MaxConnectionsToServer and the amount of connections, refer to the blog on peeking into client & server WCF communication.
You may have noticed that the blog referenced above is for Windows AppFabric Cache, this is because the engine under both technologies is fairly similar hence the concept of DataCacheFactory can be ported. Find more on the difference between these two technologies
Other related links
· Windows Azure AppFabric Caching availability announced!! blog post.
· Video: Introduction to the Windows Azure AppFabric Cache
· Video: Windows Azure AppFabric Caching – How to Set-up and Deploy a Simple Cache
· Windows Azure AppFabric FAQ on MSDN
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)9 Comments
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I think the Azure Caching Services pricing is way too high. I know this is “suggested retail pricing” and agreements and promotions make this a lot less…
I can go and get a pretty powerful dedicated hardware box from SoftLayer or ThePlanet for less than 300/month with 4gig of memory…and it can function beyond just caching.
The comparison will need to take more things into account, such as the support you need to give to the bits you install in the box, the price of the license and the actual amount of available RAM for the service you will create. With 4gig you are likely going to have a cache of no more than 2gig since the OS and the cache service also require memory. Cache boxes are dedicated, or at least they should be, as soon as you put some other application you compromised the available RAM and add the possibility to crash your server/service due to the other applications unknown behavior.
The thing to keep in mind is that a comparison of a VM and a service require a meticulous break down of your total cost which will never just be the price of the rented VM. BTW, the points I gave above are only some of the major points to consider.
Also, if you look at a competitor that offers a very similar service (not just a VM), like Heroku, you will find that this service is very competitively priced.
Having said this, there is always room for improvement, I have sent your feedback to the product group – Thx!
Cheers,
-Jaime.
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We use Azure extensively. I started down the path of rolling in Azure caching until I found out there is no support for notifications. Without notifications it’s nothing more than a glorified dictionary which a polling-driven backing store. Hoping they get notificatons working — otherwise, there is no real value here for us.
Hi Shaun, can you throw a little more light on your notification requirement and the scenario for which you need notifications? How would your application act on cache change notifications? Also, would your system require real-time notifications to work properly? (else, you could have periodic polling)
Thanks
Ganesh
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