SharePoint Tidbit - Let's talk about Caching - Part 2

[Christopher Weaver]

First published on TECHNET on Jan 30, 2013

Hello All,

I had written a tidbit about Caching and one of my customers had some questions and I thought I would share the answers with all of you.

Previous Post http://blogs.technet.com/b/christwe/archive/2013/01/24/sharepoint-tidbit-let-s-talk-about-caching.a...

1. First at all, can we combine Output and Object cache?
   
   1. Object Cache is enabled by Default, when you turn on Output cache you should be running both.  However with that being said you do need to enable the following to make Object Cache work properly http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758656(v=office.14).aspx#section2

1. How can you define the cache profile for editors/publishers to assure that they will see the latest version?
   
   1. This is a draw back to caching once they make a change they will have to wait for the refresh of data, or they can flush the cache then open the site and inspect there changes http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770245(v=office.12).aspx

1. How we can assure the minimal inconsistency within the WFE servers?
   
   1. By maintaining the smallest refresh time that is reasonable

1. What will be the best way to estimate the output cache refresh? Any tips on it?
   
   1. It is something that you will have to just figure out by balancing the performance gain with the inconsistency between WFE.  I would recommend start with 45 seconds and see if that gives the performance boost you are looking for without a noticeable inconsistency and then adjust accordingly http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261797(v=office.12).aspx .

1. Speaking about the Object Cache, any ways to determinate a recommended max size for it?
   
   1. Recommend at least 500KB per Site Collection, and I would add another 500KB afterwards just as a buffer (You know there will be growth and you don’t want to have to adjust to soon).
   
   
   1. Remember that we will be allowing SharePoint to hold this in-memory so we will possibly have to add RAM to each WFE account for the extra growth.
   
   
   1. To set the size see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770229(v=office.14).aspx#object