NCache Cloud in Azure / AWS

NCache is available in Azure / AWS as a Cloud Service. This means you can purchase it on Pay as You Go basis with hourly prices or make 1-Year Reserved with reduced prices. And, you purchase NCache Cloud directly from the Azure / AWS marketplace and not from Alachisoft.

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

Azure / AWS Marketplace + NCache Cloud Portal

You must purchase NCache Cloud directly from Azure or AWS marketplace. Once you start the purchase process and select an offering, you’re then taken to NCache Cloud Portal (coming) at Alachisoft website. This portal has all the details of what you need to purchase in terms of the number of 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.

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 server licenses and client licenses, and also server-only licenses.

1-Year Reserved + Pay as You Go

You can choose this option to purchase 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 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.

2. Extra Pro-rated Reserved (discounted):

   purchase extra licenses later on a pro-rated monthly basis (for 3+ months) and until the end of your period. And, you pay the same discounted price as 1-Year Reserved.

3. Pay as You Go:

   choose this option if your need for additional licenses is more short term and not until the end of your 1-Year Reserved period. You’re charged the regular price on hourly basis but billed on monthly basis.

4. 24x7 Support:

   1-Year Reserved also allows you to purchase 24x7 support for NCache Enterprise.

Learn more about NCache Cloud Pricing.

Cache Server VMs Hosted in Your Own VNET

When you purchase NCache Cloud for Azure / AWS, the actual cache server VMs 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 VMs and Alachisoft has no 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.

Please note that cache server VMs are hosted in your own cloud subscription. Therefore, when you purchase NCache Cloud, you only pay for NCache licenses and not your VMs. And Azure / AWS cloud provider bills you for those VMs separately than NCache Cloud. As a result, the cost of these VMs is not included in NCache Cloud cost.

Deploy & Activate from NCache Cloud Portal

When you purchase NCache Cloud, you can choose to deploy the cache server VMs 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 server VMs from the cloud marketplace and automatically deploys them to your cloud environment and VNET based on your preferences.

After this, NCache Cloud Portal activates all cache servers against NCache Cloud 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 client licenses through the same cache servers in each environment that you’ve specified. For server-only licenses, client 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 so your environment is still totally secure and inaccessible to NCache Clout Portal.

Deploy & Activate NCache Manually

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 licenses 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 servers 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.

2. Offline Manual Activation (1-Year Reserved):

   if your cache servers do not have any Internet access (perhaps due to security reasons), then you can do an offline activation for 1-Year Reserved licenses only. Pay as You Go requires Internet access as it uses a “heart-beat” to notify NCache License Server every hour that cannot be done in an offline mode.

For offline manual activation, you generate an “offline activation request key” at the cache server, save it to a different computer with Internet access, access NCache License Server web portal from that computer, enter the “offline activation request key” at the portal to obtain an “offline activation authorization code”, take this authorization code back to the original cache server to complete the activation. You must repeat this process for each cache server one by one. And, this way you’re able to activate cache servers in a highly secured manner.

NCache Cloud Portal Docs (coming)

WAN Replication across Multiple Zones & Regions

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.

NCache Clients for Azure / AWS

NCache 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).

NCache 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.

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.

What to Do Next?

• NCache Details
• NCache Cloud Pricing
• Get on Azure Marketplace: (coming)
• Get on AWS Marketplace: (coming)
• Request a Personalized LIVE Demo