If you have an ASP.NET / ASP.NET Core, .NET web services, .NET Microservices, or any other .NET server application and are considering the use of Redis then please take a look at NCache as it is an ideal Redis alternative for .NET applications.
NCache is a 100% native .NET Open Source in-memory distributed cache. NCache is extremely fast and linearly scalable and helps you remove your application performance bottlenecks around data storage and databases.
Since 2005, NCache has been a .NET market leader and preferred industry choice for .NET applications scaling needs.
Below are some of the reasons why NCache is an ideal Redis alternative for .NET applications.
The first reason why NCache is a great Redis Alternative is because NCache is 100% native .NET / .NET Core. And fits nicely with your .NET application stack. That is why, it is the favorite in .NET developer community and a .NET market leader since 2005.
As a result of this, NCache allows you to have .NET server-side code like Read-through/Write-through, Cache Loader, Custom Dependency, and Entry Processor. And hence is a perfect candidate as redis alternative for Windows/.NET/.NET Core applications.
NCache supports the following platforms:
Read more about NCache On-Premises Deployment Options.
Redis is developed in C++ on Linux. And, it is not officially supported on Windows. Below are the Redis platform support options:
Second reason NCache is perfect candidate as Redis Alternative is because it offers Client Cache (Near Cache). Which is basically a local cache very close to your application (InProc/OutProc). And it keeps a subset of the cache either very close to your application (OutProc) or inside your application process (InProc) while keeping it synchronized with the entire cache cluster.
Client Cache gives your application InProc speed, meaning as fast as fetching objects from your application process memory/heap. This is extremely fast and no OutProc cache (like Redis) can match this.
Redis does not provide any Client Cache. As a result, you must always go to the caching tier across the network to fetch any data from the cache or update it.
Comparing Redis vs NCache, there is no match to the InProc speed in NCache thru Client Cache.
Third reason for choosing NCache as Redis Alternative could be Redis high availability and maintenance issues. NCache has a highly dynamic architecture. Two things that set NCache apart from Redis are
Peer-to-peer clustering means there is no Master/Slave concept and you can add or remove ANY cache server from the cluster without stopping or restricting anything. NCache automatically adjusts the cluster membership when this happens. This is extremely useful because at runtime you don’t know which server might go down but you want your cache to always be running.
Partition-Replica Cache topology is the second reason for high availability because it automatically adjusts cache partitioning whenever you add or remove a cache server from the cluster. This makes NCache self-healing which means NCache automatically adjusts itself to the “new reality” when a cache server is added or goes down.
Unlike NCache’s Peer-to-Peer dynamic clustering, Redis in memory cache has a Master/Slave clustering architecture with shards that are rigid at runtime. For example, if a shard goes down or is removed at runtime, the cluster becomes unavailable until hash-slots of the removed shard are manually reassigned to remaining shards in the cluster. And, this manual intervention while cache is down is very painful and problematic.
Fourth reason why NCache is a great Redis Alternative is because NCache provides cloud features that are important for business critical .NET Applications. NCache officially supports both Azure and AWS cloud platforms both from their marketplace and through NCache Cloud Portal for Azure & AWS. And, NCache in cloud automatically provides email and phone based technical support during office hours. And, you can optionally purchase our 24x7 support as well.
Following cloud options are provided by NCache:
NCache Virtual Machines are available from Azure and AWS Marketplace. In this option, the caching infrastructure is managed and monitored by your own IT staff and they have full access to these VMs. And, you can contact NCache tech support for both regular support and optionally 24x7 support if purchased.
NCache Managed Cache Service is available from NCache Cloud Portal (at alachisoft.com website). This option comes with built-in regular support and 24x7 support. And, it also includes 24x7 monitoring provided by Alachisoft staff. Your IT staff can also have full access to the cache cluster VMs if you wish but you do not have to have this access.
Read more about NCache Cloud Deployment Options.
Unlike NCache that is supported fully by Alachisoft everywhere including 24x7 support, Redis comes in multiple flavors that are supported by different companies that are unrelated to each other. And, most of the places, Redis Open Source is being supported by companies that do not own its source code and neither do they control it. These flavors of Redis are:
For mission-critical .NET applications, you need to make sure that the distributed cache you’re integrating into your application is fully supported for such sensitive business needs. Otherwise, your business suffers when something goes wrong.
Fifth reason why NCache is a great Redis Alternative is because NCache provides features to make sure your cache is always fresh. The most common use case for a distributed cache is to cache application data that also resides in the database and could be updated by other applications in the database. And, if this data becomes stale in the cache then you lose all confidence on the data integrity.
As a result, you end up restricting your caching to read-only data which is only 10% of the total data in most cases. And, because of this, your application does not benefit completely from a distributed cache and does not scale its performance fully.
See how NCache and Redis compare in this very important feature area.
NCache provides a rich set of features to let you make sure your cache is always fresh and you can confidently rely on its data integrity. As a result, you’ll cache practically all data.
Here are some of the features NCache provides:
Redis does not have the ability to do most of what NCache does when it comes to keeping your cache fresh. It relies on your application to keep track of all this which makes your life difficult and, in many cases, it is not even possible.
Here is what Redis provides:
Sixth reason why NCache is a prominent Redis Alternative is because NCache provides SQL and LINQ support for searching cache. Once you have a distributed cache that allows you to keep it fresh, you end up caching a lot of data. And, the more data you cache, the more you need to be able to “search” it based on something other than keys.
NCache lets you search the cache based on object attributes, groups/subgroups, tags, and named tags. This makes it really easy for you to find the data you’ve stored in the cache.
Redis has no such support.
NCache provides a rich set of features to let you search the cache with SQL/LINQ. Here are some of the features NCache provides:
Redis has no such support for SQL/LINQ searching.
Seventh reason why NCache is a eminent Redis Alternative is because NCache allows you to deploy server-side code to run on the cache servers in the cluster. A really powerful distributed cache allows you to deploy server-side code to run on the cache servers in the cluster. NCache provides strong support server-side code and also lets you develop it in .NET since NCache itself is a native .NET solution.
Redis has no such support.
NCache is the only .NET solution to provide you server-side code capability. NCache provides a rich set of features to let you develop and deploy server-side code in .NET to run on the cache servers in the cluster. Here are some of the features NCache provides:
Redis has no such support for server-side code.
Eighth reason why NCache is a distinguished Redis Alternative is because NCache can handle distribution across WAN in multi-datacenter deployments. More and more high traffic applications are now being deployed in multiple datacenters (Azure Regions or AWS Availability Zones) either for geographic affinity and load balancing or for high availability and disaster recovery.
When this happens, then just like your application database, your distributed cache needs to handle this distribution across the WAN.
NCache provides a rich set of features for WAN Replication of the cache. Here are some of the features NCache provides:
Redis has the following limited support.
To help you further with your evaluation you can download our detailed feature level comparison, and find out best fit for your .NET applications scaling needs. Feel free to contact our tech support for handholding session or any technical questions.
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