What You Need To Know About Memcached Server
Since time immemorial, mankind has been on the search for ways to make their life easier. This necessity has led to the invention of the computer and the internet, initial stages of development proved to be too slow hence the need for more speed and efficiency. Memcached is a tool that has been devised to speed up your website’s information from a server by reducing database load,because any time a request is sent, it goes to the database hence increasing load. Memcached uses the principle of dynamic data(short term memory for applications) the dynamic data used per say is caching, this allows for assets to be kept in the RAM so that latency due to distance is reduced or eliminated. Cached data can be read quickly compared to other forms of data.
Memcached is an open source software created and developed by danga interactive. It was released in 2003 and can operate across various unix like operating systems (linux alike operating systems) and also on Microsoft . It obtains its license from BSD. It is a distributed memory caching system. Memcached stores data in form of small arbitrary objects that are based on key values. These are :
● Page rendering
● API CALLS
● Database call results
Memcached is formulated in such a way that it has four components. These components work hand in hand to deliver the best results and cut on latency thus increasing feedback speed. These components are:
● Server software- this stores the information and the cached data in a hash table
● Client software – this is the software that is provided with a list of available memcached servers
● Hashing algorithm – found in the client server. This algorithm chooses one of the available memcached servers.
● LRU(Least Recently Used) – this is a determiner of sorts. It chooses to delete expired cache or reuse it.
A memcached software then works this way: the client will request for a piece of data or information, this action will prompt the memcached to check if the data is stored in cache. Then two circumstances may arise:
1. The information or data is stored in cache: the data is derived by the memcache and provided to the client without the need to check in the database for said data. Thus cutting on time.
2. The data is not stored in cache: then data will have to be checked in the database, find the data, retrieve it, store it in memcache and then provide the data to the client
A memcache setup has various servers, the hashing algorithm then will choose on behalf of the client on which server to use. This method of choosing allows to distribute the load over various servers to avoid an overload. Mecache works on the following principles:
● The servers are independent and they do not share data. All servers have different information.
● Client data cannot be distributed over various servers, a client can only feed data to one server
● Values are kept in the form of RAM. If RAM is depleted, the oldest value is deleted.
