NCache Cloud in Azure / AWS

NCache Cloud is available in Azure and AWS Marketplaces as a Service (SaaS). This means you can now obtain it instantaneously with a few mouse clicks. You can also seamlessly scale your cache deployment without any down time.

You can purchase NCache Cloud on Pay as You Go basis with hourly prices or on 1-Year Reserved basis with discounted prices. And, you purchase NCache Cloud directly from the Azure / AWS marketplace and not from Alachisoft. Both NCache Enterprise and Professional editions are available as NCache Cloud.

Here are some highlights of NCache Cloud from Azure / AWS marketplaces.

Get NCache Cloud from Azure / AWS Marketplace

You must purchase NCache Cloud directly from Azure or AWS marketplace by selecting NCache Enterprise Cloud or NCache Professional Cloud offering. Once you start the purchase process and select an offering, you’re taken to NCache Cloud Portal at Alachisoft website. This portal has all the details of what you need to purchase in terms of the number of NCache Cloud licenses (client licenses, server licenses, or server-only licenses), 24x7 support, Pay as You Go vs 1 Year Reservation, and more.

Once you complete your purchase details at NCache Cloud Portal, your purchase is final and Azure / AWS cloud provider starts billing you for it. At this time, NCache Cloud Portal allows you to automatically deploy cache servers inside your own cloud subscription.

Pay as You Go (Hourly)

You can choose this option without any commitment. You’re charged on hourly basis but billed on monthly basis and you can cancel anytime. You can purchase NCache Cloud server licenses and client licenses, and also server-only licenses.

1-Year Reserved + Pay as You Go

You can choose this option to purchase NCache Cloud as 1-Year Reserved for your baseline configuration at a discounted price. And then you can also add more licenses later to this 1-Year Reserved either on a pro-rated monthly basis at the same discounted price or on Pay as You Go hourly basis at regular price.

Here is how you do it:

1. 1-Year Reserved (discounted): purchase this at a discounted price for your baseline configuration that you need for the entire period. You buy the following:
   1. Server-only licenses
   2. Client licenses
   3. Server licenses
2. Add Extra Prorated Reserved Months (discounted): purchase extra licenses later on a pro-rated monthly basis (for 3+ months) and until the end of your reserved period. And, you pay the same discounted price as 1-Year Reserved. You buy the same types of licenses mentioned above.
3. Pay as You Go (hourly): choose this option if your need for additional licenses is less than 3 months or it is not until the end of your 1-Year Reserved period. You may also have a need for licenses some of the time and not all the time during this period. For all such scenarios, you can purchase additional licenses on a Pay as You Go basis where you’re charged the regular price on hourly basis but billed on monthly basis. You buy the following:
   1. Server-only licenses
   2. Client licenses
   3. Server licenses
4. 24x7 Support: 1-Year Reserved also allows you to purchase 24x7 support if you’ve purchased NCache Enterprise. You’re charged on both reserved licenses and hourly Pay as You Go licenses. You pay 24x7 for the following:
   1. 24x7 Support for Server-only licenses (Reserved + Hourly if any)
   2. 24x7 Support for Client licenses (Reserved + Hourly if any)
   3. 24x7 Support for Server licenses (Reserved + Hourly if any)
5. Auto-Renew for Next 1-Year Reserved Period (increase/decrease): at the end of your 1-Year Reserved Period, you can automatically renew your Reserved licenses and 24x7 Support for another 1-Year Reserved Period. At this time, you can choose to increase or decrease the number of licenses or keep them the same. You can also choose to add 24x7 Support if not purchased already or cancel it.

NCache Cloud Servers Hosted in Your Environment

When you purchase NCache Cloud for Azure / AWS, the actual cache servers are hosted inside your own cloud subscription and VNET. This provides you two benefits as mentioned below:

1. Faster performance: having cache servers close to your application servers (meaning cache clients) ensures extremely fast performance because there is no cost of network hops or VPC Peering which would be required if cache servers were hosted in a separate VNET or subscription.
2. Extra security: having cache servers in your own VNET means extra security because you have total control over these cache servers and nobody including Alachisoft has any access to it except when you provide it (just like on-premises). Even if you select “auto deployment” option in NCache Cloud Portal (see below) and provide authentication information to the portal for your cloud subscription, this information is provided only as a token that expires after you’re done deploying.
3. VMs of your choice with best prices from Azure / AWS: NCache Cloud cache servers are hosted inside your own cloud subscription. Therefore, you pay for NCache licenses and your VMs separately. This gives you the freedom to select VMs of your choice (Windows or Linux) and get the best prices directly from Azure / AWS based on your contractual relationship with them. And, you also know exactly how much NCache Cloud is costing you versus the VMs.

Deploy NCache Cloud Automatically

When you purchase NCache Cloud, you can choose to deploy the cache servers directly from NCache Cloud Portal in a seamless manner. NCache Cloud Portal uses Azure / AWS authentication for your cloud subscription provided by you to access your cloud subscription. It then provisions NCache Cloud cache servers from the cloud marketplace on your behalf based on your VM preferences. It then automatically deploys these cache servers to your cloud environment and VNET based on your selection.

After this, NCache Cloud Portal activates all NCache Cloud servers against licenses you’ve purchased (1-Year Reserved or Pay as You Go). And, if you’ve purchased client-server licenses, then it also activates NCache Cloud client licenses through the same cache servers in each environment that you’ve specified; your cache clients are not directly activated and instead only the cache servers are activated for that many clients. For server-only licenses, the process is even simpler because the clients are free and therefore do not need any activation. As a result, you don’t have to do anything yourself.

Please note that the authentication information you’ve provided to NCache Cloud Portal is in the form of a token that expires shortly afterwards. Therefore, your environment is still totally secure and inaccessible to NCache Clout Portal later.

Deploy NCache Cloud Manually (Higher Security)

If your environment is highly secure and you don’t want to give any authentication information to NCache Cloud Portal for automatic deployment (even though the authentication token expires right after deployment is done), then you can do this activation manually after purchasing the licenses.

After you’ve purchased NCache Cloud at NCache Cloud Portal, you’re provided a subscription license key (1-Year Reserved or Pay as You Go). Simply go to your Azure / AWS cloud subscription, provision preconfigured NCache VMs in your cloud marketplace yourself, and activate cache servers by using the subscription license key. You can do this activation in two ways:

1. Online Manual Activation (Pay as You Go, 1-Year Reserved): if your cache server VMs have Internet access, you can choose this option and activate them one by one instantaneously by entering the license key. The cache server talks to NCache license server directly and activates itself. You can use PowerShell scripts in all of this for automation.
2. Offline Manual Activation (1-Year Reserved): if your NCache Cloud cache servers do not have any Internet access (usually due to security reasons), then you can do an offline activation if you have 1-Year Reserved licenses. Pay as You Go requires Internet access as it uses a “heart-beat” to notify NCache Cloud License Server every hour that cannot be done in an offline mode. For offline manual activation, you go through the following steps:
   1. Generate an “offline activation request key” at the cache server VM
   2. Save this key to a different computer that has Internet access
   3. Access NCache Cloud License Server web portal from that other computer
   4. Enter the “offline activation request key” at the NCache License Server Portal to obtain an “offline activation authorization code”
   5. Take this authorization code back to the original cache server VM to complete the activation.
   6. You must repeat this process for each cache server VM one by one. And, this way you’re able to activate cache servers in a highly secured manner.

Deploy in Multiple Zones & Regions (WAN Replication)

In Azure / AWS, NCache Enterprise provides a powerful WAN Replication feature that allows you to replicate the cache across multiple zones within a region or even across multiple regions. You create clustered caches in each zone/region and then use NCache Bridge Topology for WAN Replication across all of them. You can replicate clustered caches across the WAN in active-passive, active-active, and 3+ active-active manner.

Learn more about NCache WAN Replication.

Free 60-Day Eval for Azure / AWS

NCache allows you to use a fully working software free of cost for a limited period of time for evaluation purpose. For evaluation of NCache in Azure / AWS, you only pay for the cache server VMs and not NCache licenses.

In each option below, you can do 60-day evaluation and later extend it 30 days at a time for a total of 180 days.

• Eval on Pre-Configured Cloud Marketplace VMs: you can buy a pre-configured NCache VM from Azure marketplace and AWS marketplace and from within your cloud subscription and then use the NCache Eval Key that you’ve obtained by registering on our website to turn on the evaluation.
• Eval on Blank Windows/Linux Cloud VMs: you can buy any standard Windows / Linux cloud VM from Azure / AWS marketplace. Then, download NCache from our website to install on these VMs. Then use the NCache Eval Key that you’ve obtained by registering on our website to turn on the evaluation.

During the Evaluation and Trial Period, NCache is fully functional and also free. And, you’re also able to get free technical support from our world-class Technical Support team.

Get NCache Clients for Azure / AWS

NCache Cloud has a server portion and a client portion. The server portion is called NCache Cloud that you purchase/obtain from Azure & AWS marketplaces. And, client portion is something you can embed inside your application. You can obtain NCache Client from the following sources:

You can bundle the NCache Client libraries inside your .NET / .NET Core application and deploy to Azure and AWS. However, please note that bundled NCache Client libraries only provide an InProc Client Cache feature. OutProc Client Cache is only possible if you install NCache Client through Windows Installer (.msi file).