caching - ASP.NET cache maximum size

Question

What's the maximum size of ASP.NET cache (either deployer on a single server or out-of-process on a Web farm) you can have?

If there is a limit on how big ASP.NET cache you can have, is there a workaround to increase that limit?

Thanks james

Answer 1

It depends on how much memory you have and also your IIS / ASP.Net configuration.

Checkout the Caching Explained section in this MSDN article. It's old, but explains some of the guidelines.

The ASP.NET cache starts trimming the cache based on a LRU algorithm and the CacheItemPriority enumerated value assigned to the item after memory consumption is within 20 percent of the configured memory limit. If the memory limit is set too high, it is possible for the process to be recycled unexpectedly. Your application might also experience out-of-memory exceptions. If the memory limit is set too low, it could increase the amount of time spent performing garbage collections, which decreases overall performance.

This forum post is also very informative...

http://forums.asp.net/p/962451/1199949.aspx