what's difference between azure shared cache and new azure redis cache?

Question

We were looking for a cache for a windows web role azure web application and need to know how shared cache compares to the new azure redis cache.

At first we were thinking of using the shared cache, but now microsoft has announced the availability of redis cache. What's the difference between azure redis cache with the new azure shared cache service?

I know shared cache has session state provider that I can wire up in web.config - does azure redis cache have that?

In the future we are interested in utilizing cache to speed up access to often accessed lists of objects (and hopefully being able to expire and update them when they change). How does azure redis cache compare to azure shared cache (i thought at least the old no longer available azure shared cache version before the current version had some kind of expiration of data support).

Im implementing both right now, to see which one fits my needs better. while being able to get a working session provider is important. I think you should care about getting your moneys worth in other areas (performance, features), azure cache will cost more even after redis is out of preview. it seems to have more built-in cache invalidation abilities, but i have not tested them out yet. — user1852503

Deepak Deepak · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-14T06:56:27

You can find redis session state provide nuget package here http://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Web.RedisSessionStateProvider/0.1.0.330-Pre

Here's the doc on how to use it http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2014/05/12/announcing-asp-net-session-state-provider-for-redis-preview-release.aspx I would say, you can start by looking at http://redis.io for features etc and compare it with shared cache.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn690523.aspx doc has more details on Azure Redis cache preview.

Hope this helps.

what's difference between azure shared cache and new azure redis cache?

2 Answers