Introducing AppFabric 1.1
Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server (AppFabric 1.1) is an update of Windows Server AppFabric 1.0. This topic covers the new features and capabilities of the AppFabric 1.1 release. In addition to the new AppFabric 1.1 features highlighted here, AppFabric continues to provide all of the hosting, management, and caching capabilities of the first release of AppFabric. For a review of those 1.0 features, see Introducing Windows Server AppFabric 1.0.
For more information on AppFabric, see Windows Server Developer Center (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=182970).
What's New in this Release?
AppFabric 1.1 contains several improvements to the original Windows Server AppFabric 1.0 release. This release provides an upgrade path from Windows Server AppFabric 1.0, but it can also be installed stand-alone.
The following AppFabric Caching features have been added in this release:
Read-Through/Write-Behind |
This allows a backend provider to be used on the cache servers to assist with retrieving and storing data to a backend, such as a database. Read-through enables the cache to "read-through" to a backend in the context of a Get request. Write-behind enables updates to cached data to be saved asynchronously to the backend. For more information, see Creating a Read-Through / Write-Behind Provider (AppFabric 1.1 Caching). |
Graceful Shutdown |
This is useful for moving data from a single cache hosts to rest of the servers in the cache cluster before shutting down the cache host for maintenance. This helps to prevent unexpected loss of cached data in a running cache cluster. This can be accomplished with the Graceful parameter of the Stop-CacheHost Windows PowerShell command. |
Domain Accounts |
In addition to running the AppFabric Caching Service with the NETWORK SERVICE account, you can now run the service as a domain account. For more information, see Change the Caching Service Account (AppFabric 1.1 Caching). |
New ASP.NET Session State and Output Caching Provider |
New ASP.NET session state and output caching providers are available. The new session state provider has support for the lazy-loading of individual session state items using AppFabric Caching as a backing store. This makes sites that have a mix of small and large session state data more efficient, because pages that don't need large session state items won't incur the cost of sending this data over the network. For more information, see Using the ASP.NET 4 Caching Providers for AppFabric 1.1. |
Compression |
You can now enable compression for cache clients. For more information, see Application Configuration Settings (AppFabric 1.1 Caching). |
Multiple Cache Client Application Configuration Sections |
A new |
For this release, we recommend performing a clean installation of AppFabric 1.1. However, an upgrade path from Windows Server AppFabric 1.0 is available. Before testing the upgrade, please review the known issues. New Windows PowerShell commands have been added to enable an online upgrade. For more information, see Upgrade Procedure for an AppFabric Cache Cluster (AppFabric 1.1).
For other changes and known issues, see Release Notes for AppFabric 1.1.
See Also
Other Resources
Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server
2012-03-29