Windows Server AppFabric Speeds Web Apps

Windows Server AppFabric, a free set of extensions to Windows Server, includes an in-memory caching system that distributes data across a Web server farm to scale and speed data access. The caching system, called AppFabric Caching Services, could remove certain bottlenecks for Web applications running on Windows Server, potentially helping organizations deploy very high-throughput ASP.NET Web applications. The extensions require Windows Server 2008 or later and the .NET Framework 4.

(A second component of Windows Server AppFabric, called AppFabric Hosting Services, provides infrastructure and tools to simplify deploying and managing applications based on the Windows Communication Foundation messaging and Windows Workflow Foundation workflow platforms; it was covered in “Windows Server AppFabric Eases App Hosting, Management” on page 20 of the Aug. 2010 Update.)

Web Application Data Cached Across Servers

The AppFabric Caching Services component (code-named Velocity) of Windows Server AppFabric stores copies of application data in memory on multiple servers, providing fast, scalable access to data by Web applications and enabling those applications to exploit much more physical memory than would be available on any single server.