Distributed Cache Service in SharePoint 2013

The Distributed Cache service, which is built on Windows Server AppFabric Cache, is set to run in a collocated mode on all SharePoint 2013 Servers by default, using up to 10% of the server's total physical memory.

Why Distributed Cache ?

In SharePoint Server 2013, Microsoft managed to dramatically improve performance by storing objects and data across servers to enable the accelerated execution of many different types of requests and operations.



Typically a bottleneck in performance occur while retrieving and writing application data that resides in database and application data in session states. We can use the various levels of caching in SharePoint 2010 to increase the performance of SharePoint applications as written in the previous article. In-memory distributed caching is a form of caching that allows the cache to span multiple servers so that it can grow in size and in transactional capacity.



It's essential for maintaining the large amounts of information on your SharePoint Server, ensuring that the information is fresh and readily available for the end user.
Improving SharePoint 2013 performance relies on the provision of caching functionalities to the following features:

Claims-based authentication

Newsfeeds, micro blogging and conversations

OneNote client access

Security trimming

Page load performance

Caching functionalities, provided by the Distributed Cache service, enable the SharePoint features listed above to quickly retrieve data without any dependency on databases stored in SQL Server, as everything is stored in memory.