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sharepointsharepoint-2013appfabric
zehnaseeb
zehnaseeb

Reputation: 407

Why windows appfabric needed for sharepoint 2013?

While installing new sharepoint 2013, pre-requisite installs windows app fabric which was not there in previous sharepoint versions. So why this needed for sharepoint 2013? what feature it adds to the new sharepoint 2013?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 756

Answers (1)

Vadim Gremyachev
Vadim Gremyachev

Reputation: 59318

Windows Server AppFabric is installed as a prerequisite for SharePoint 2013. AppFabric is installed as an extension to the Windows Server Application Server Role and consist of two main components:

  • Distributed caching
  • Service and workflow management

How is AppFabric leveraged in the context of SharePoint 2013?

The AppFabric distributed caching is used by SharePoint 2013 for caching social elements and FedAuth tokens. Every time a user accesses a front end server the user needs to be authenticated which can become an issue when using multiple front end servers. In SharePoint 2010 this was handled by enabling load balancing affinity (Sticky Sessions) to ensure that the user stayed on the same front end server. By caching the FedAuth token in the distributed cache it is no longer necessary to enable sticky session since the authentication token is now available from all front end servers through the cache cluster.

SharePoint takes advantage of this service in quite a few ways, specifically through user profiles and authentication.

  • For user profiles, it enables everything to be “in sync” and have minimal visible POSTs back to the server. Instead, the browser POSTs to the distributed cache and returns quickly because the distributed cache is resident in server memory. The data doesn’t have to be persisted to the database. Behind the scenes, a process is doing the persistence from the distributed cache to the database, but the browser does not have to wait for it. This drastically improves responsiveness.
  • For authentication, it means that the authentication information exists above the IIS Cache level (see diagram). So you can move from server to server with ease without being redirected to the login page. This allows your load balancers to actively balance the load of all requests. So you could get the page you requested from server A, but all of the images may come from server B. The end result is a faster response and a healthier, more balanced SharePoint farm. It makes login easier and allows load balancing to be more robust. Additionally, we get another level of cache that’s farm-wide aside from the Hierarchical Object Store that you can use.

References

AppFabric Caching and SharePoint: Concepts and Examples (Part 1)

SharePoint 2013: AppFabric and Distributed Cache Service

Upvotes: 2

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