New SharePoint 2013 Server Service - Distributed Cache

We recently installed our SharePoint 2013 server farm (and by recently, I mean around a year ago). I noticed a new server service that could be run in our farm called "Distributed Cache".

What is Distributed Cache?

Well, basically what it says on the tin, a caching functionality in SharePoint 2013. It is either required by or improves the folllowing features in SharePoint 2013:

• Authenication
• My Site Newsfeeds
• Access for OneNote client
• Security
• Page loading performance

This service was not available in SharePoint 2010 like it is now in SharePoint 2013.

So when planning for this, you may want to consider using a dedicated Distributed Cache server or allocated memory to the Distributed Cache. The latter would affect performance however.

I have started the Distributed Cache server on our 2 Web Front End servers which are load balanced.

Planning for feeds and the Distributed Cache service can be found here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/jj219572(office.15).aspx

Managing the service can be found here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/jj219613(office.15).aspx

And a full overview of Distributed Cahce is here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/jj219700(office.15).aspx