Select Network Interface Card

NCache being a network intensive solution has mainly two kinds of communication going on in a cache cluster.

Cache server to server communication
Cache Client to server communication

NCache can detect all Network Interface Cards (NIC's) on a server node and allows you to choose any. Selected NIC will be used by NCache for cluster wide communication.

If you have two NICs available on a cache server then it is highly recommended to use both NICs for these NCache communications.

NCache will start utilizing both Network Interface Cards (NICs) on Cache Servers, once Dual NIC interface is configured. Using Dual NICs will enhance the overall bandwidth throughput by distributing load on two NICs thus immensely increasing performance. One NIC will be dedicated for server-to-server communication inside the cache cluster and second NIC being reserved only for client-to-server communication. In this way, network load for cache communication is distributed on two NICs and resources will be utilized more efficiently increasing overall performance.

Here is how you can configure NCache dual NIC feature.

How to Configure Dual NICs

There are two ways to configure dual NICs for NCache:

Automatic (through NCache Manager) (Recommended)
Manual (through Configuration files)

Configuration through NCache Manager

Right click on a server node and select 'Select Network Interface Card' option from the context menu.

NCache will detect and list all the NIC's on that node.
Select NIC of your own choice and press 'Apply'.
Click 'Apply'. You will be prompted to restart NCache Service to work with fresh settings.
Click 'Yes'.

Manual Configuration

For manually specifying separate IPs for NCache cluster server-server communications and client to server communications in order to use two NICs on a cache sever for NCache, you'll have to modify "Alachisoft.NCache.Service.exe.config"

Go to Alachisoft.NCache.Service.exe.config located at:

%INSTALLATION_PATH%/NCache/bin/service/Alachisoft.NCache.Service.exe.config
Add following line in the configuration file:

<add key = "NCacheServer.BindToClusterIP" value = "20.200.20.18" />

<add key = "NCacheServer.BindToClientServerIP" value = "20.200.20.39" />

BindToClusterIP: You can inform NCache which interface to use for cluster-wide communication. In order to do so, provide the Ip Address you want the cluster server to bind with.

BindToClientServerIP: You can inform NCache which interface to use for client communication. In order to do so, please provide the Ip Address you want the client's (NCache client) server to bind with.

Once NCache service IP binding is changed for Dual NICs, you should also make sure that all client nodes configured against this cache cluster should now have their "Client.ncconf" (C:\Program Files\NCache\Config) file updated with the client-server IP address as followed.

For example, for a cache named 'DemoCache' you need to specify IP address of NIC dedicated for client-server communication in Client.ncconf file on client nodes ( same server IP address that you specified for BindToClientServerIP tag above).

In case if your cache cluster consists of two or more nodes and the client.ncconf of other nodes is not updated. Then you will have to use Configure Remote Clients to update client.ncconf of other nodes.

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