Todd Robinson

Just last week it was announced that Windows Azure AppFabric Cache is now in production. That is great news for folks who are looking to add some caching to their Azure apps. The only thing I read that concerned me was the pricing. It starts out at $45 for a small 128 MB cache and goes all the way up to $325 for 4 GB. After reading the FAQ, you’ll see that there are limits to the amount of transactions, bandwidth, and concurrent connections as well at the different sizes. Once I read the FAQ though, I can see where this is an excellent value if you’re not wanting to invest in your own equipment to run and properly size your own local Windows AppFabric Cache instance. I will have to do some further research, but I imagine that the hardware requirements to be able to do the amount of transactions and bandwidth at the upper limit of the 4 GB plan would be pretty expensive. In any case, Microsoft will not start charging for this service until August 1st, 2011. If you are thinking about getting started with Azure AppFabric Caching, you can sign up for a free trial introductory offer.

I will be presenting my talk on Windows AppFabric Cache and SQL Server 2008 on Friday, May 13th at SQLRally.This will be a 200-level session where I will go over some of the basics of caching technologies (NoSQL), who uses them, and why. I will then go into describing Windows AppFabric Cache and how its used to help with performance in concert with SQL Server. I will have a few basic demo’s that show how easy it is to integrate into an existing applications as well as its speed. My goal is to have you after the session thinking about ways to integrate this into your environment to solve some painful issues.

Not sure how I missed this during TechEd, but the AppFabric team has released Windows Server AppFabric to the masses. It can be installed on Windows Server 2008 (or Windows Server 2008 R2) Standard and Enterprise editions via the Web Platform Installer, or you can download the bits right from the Microsoft Download Center here. As with previous editions, it would be best to remove any beta or RC version prior to installation.

The project codenamed “Velocity” has now become part of Windows Server AppFabric. Windows Server AppFabric has three core capabilities: Caching (from “Velocity”), as well as workflow and service management (from “Dublin”). More info can be found at the Microsoft Windows Server Developer Center: Windows Server AppFabric