• Cache Server: This is a full install of NCache and contains everything that the other two options provide plus cache clustering capability. You must install this on any servers where you're going to host the cache, regardless of whether you have dedicated or shared cache servers.
• Remote Client: This installs the remote client libraries and client cache on all your web/app servers so you can access the cache across the network. Please note that you need remote client libraries to access the cache across the network.
• Developer: This installs the NCache API, online help/documentation, and a local stand-alone cache without any clustering capability. Please note that you cannot access a remotely hosted cache from a developer install machine. You can only access a local cache.

• Production, Staging, QA, or Dev Servers: Install NCache Enterprise Edition on the following.
• Cache servers (dedicated or shared): If you have 4 or more web/app servers in your environment hosting your application, then we recommend a dedicated caching tier of 2 servers. A dedicated cache cluster should have a minimum of 2 servers for replication and then a ratio of 5:1 between your web/app servers and the cache servers. For smaller environments, even using your web/app servers as cache servers is fine, as long as your have enough memory available on these machines.
• NCache remote clients (app or web servers): Any web/app server that is not hosting the cache server but instead will access it remotely across the network is considered an NCache remote client. You need to install the "remote client" portion of NCache on these machines.
• Developer Workstations: If you're using NCache for object caching, you will be making NCache API calls from within your application. Therefore, you need to install NCache "Developer" portion on all the developer machines. A developer install includes all the NCache API's, online help, and a local stand-alone cache. Please note that you cannot access any cache remotely from a developer install .

• Windows 2003/2008 Server (64-bit) as Cache Servers: It is highly recommended that you use 64-bit version of Windows 2003 or 2008 server platform for cache servers even if you have 32-bit applications. Having a 64-bit cache server allows you to have more storage capacity since NCache is an in-memory cache.
• Adequate RAM in cache servers: Each NCache server uses around 40-50MB memory as a .NET process and then puts 15% overhead on whatever you cache. Please keep this in mind when deciding how much memory to have in your cache servers. The total memory you need depends on how much data you plan to store in the cache. If you're storing ASP.NET Session State , then figure out your average session size and maximum number of sessions you'll ever have in the cache. You can do the same for application data caching.
• Two 1Gbit NIC's in cache servers: If you have two NIC's in cache servers, it allows you to configure NCache so it uses one of the NIC's for cache clustering and the second one for client/server communication. This improves your throughput greatly.
• Dual-CPU, Multi-core: NCache is a highly multi-threaded application and takes full advantage of extra cores and CPUs. The most common configuration for NCache is a dual-CPU machine where each CPU is either dual-core or quad-core.
• Disk: NCache does not make heavy use of the disk space so you don't need any extra ordinary disk space in your cache server machines.