AppFabric 1.1 Caching: The memory allocated to cache hosts must not exceed 50% of the available memory on the computer

This topic is intended to address a specific issue identified by a Best Practices Analyzer scan. You should apply the information in this topic only to computers that have had the AppFabric 1.1 Caching Best Practices Analyzer run against them and are experiencing the issue addressed by this topic. For more information about best practices and scans, see Best Practices Analyzer.

Operating System	Windows Server 2008 R2
Product/Feature	Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server Caching
Severity	Error
Category	Operations

Issue

One or more cache hosts have more than 50% of the available memory on the machine configured for the Caching Service.

When the AppFabric Caching Service is configured on a machine, it automatically reserves 50% of the physical memory on the machine for caching. This does not include the memory required for the service process. It is not recommended to change this setting to use more than 50% of the memory on the server.

Impact

Allocating more than 50% of the available server memory to the Caching Service can have a negative impact on Caching performance.

Memory settings of more than 50% increases the possibility of encountering a throttling memory, which happens when there is not enough physical memory to store cached items.

Resolution

Configure each cache host to use only 50% of the available memory on the computer.

This is accomplished by using the Set-CacheHostConfig PowerShell command to specify the CacheSize parameter in MB.

Additional references

Cache Administration with Windows PowerShell (AppFabric 1.1)

  2012-09-12