Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction ………………………………………………………………….................
Security………………………………………………………………………...............
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………....................
References………………………………………………………………….....................
Services
• Caching Service: Caching service is a virtual pool of
partitioned and shared memory that can be consumed. It
exposes a secure Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
endpoint to talk to and an explicit highly scalable cache. It also
exposes various cache APIs which could be called from a cache
client to store and retrieve data from the cache. It automatically
partitions the data stored in the cache so as to reduce the data-
loss probability.
Here, cache is spread out across multiple servers (depending on the size of the cache) and the user applications still access
the cache as a single in-memory cache.
Cache-aside pattern Security
AppFabric Cache supports the cache-aside pattern Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service works closely with
for development purposes. This pattern specifies the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS) for
the following steps for storing and fetching data defining the security that is used to access the cache. In other
from the cache: words, the authentication for accessing the stored data is based
on ACS. Caching service authenticates applications based on
• Whenever data is looked up in ACS token. This means that applications without having ACS
cache, first of all, it is determined token are not allowed to access any data in the cache, and once
if the data exists in the cache. application produces ACS token, it is matched for authentication
and accordingly the access is granted to the data stored in the
• If data exists in the cache, it is cache. This security information necessary to connect to the
returned to the user application. cache is provided at the time of provisioning itself.
• If data does not exist in the cache, By using ACS for security of the data, Azure AppFabric Caching
then the original data source service ensures that the data is fetched by only authenticated
is queried to fetch the required users/applications. As discussed earlier, the cache is spread
data. Once the data is fetched, across multiple servers and by design, Azure AppFabric caching
the cache is loaded with the data supports multitenancy which supports sharing of resources
and the data is then returned to between multiple users/applications. So, to ensure reliability
the user application. and security of cached data, AppFabric caching service makes
use of ACS tokens. This way, applications can access only the
Hence, the cache is updated over time as the data attached to a particular ACS token. This ensures that no
instances of the application requests for the data. data hacking takes place between different caches in Windows
Further, AppFabric cache supports different features Azure data centres.
including configuring the time frame for which data
should reside in the cache. Security being an important aspect of any data driven
application, Microsoft has ensured that the cached data is
It should be noted that the cache-aside pattern exposed to only authenticated users/applications based on
doesn’t allows the pre-population of data in Access Control Service which is a highly secure and reliable
the cache. mechanism based on federated services.
The data which is frequently changed and The data which is specific to This includes an application’s
read by an application can be loaded into a user session or a particular resource data which is not
the cache and application can access this activity can be stored in cache. user session specific and
data from the cache rather than the original Caching service provides pre- could be shared across the
application database or other storage built ASP.Net session state complete application. For
type. This result in improved performance providers which could be used example, data representing
coupled with increased scalability. For to store session state in a in- product inventories.
example, data representing a product memory cache provided by the
catalogue or a country list or stock tickers. caching service.
In simplest terms, any managed data type which is serializable can be stored in Windows Azure AppFabric
cache.
Conclusion
Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service forms a part of the comprehensive middleware services
provided by Microsoft as a part of its PaaS offering, Windows Azure Platform. AppFabric caching service
provides a highly scalable, secure, easy to use, cost effective solution for all distributed caching needs.
AppFabric caching service provides pre-built ASP.Net providers and caching APIs to store and retrieve
data from the cache. It requires minimal configuration/code changes for its implementation. Further, it
only requires developers to update the cache size and region in the Windows Azure Portal. The rest of
the management and provision process is taken care of by the caching service.
AppFabric Caching service ensures proper security of the cached data based on the ACS tokens. This
becomes more important considering the multi-tenancy model of the Windows Azure Platform. The
cache is distributed among multiple servers so as to ensure minimal data loss, but overall, the cache
is represented as a single, unified, highly scalable and reliable distributed in-memory caching service.
Hence, it could be concluded that AppFabric Caching service has made distributed caching a lot easier
for developers and IT professionals.
References
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg983488.aspx
• http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/tour/caching/
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