AppFabric 1.1 Caching: Seed node offloading is recommended for clusters with less than three nodes

This topic is intended to address a specific issue identified by a Best Practices Analyzer scan. You should apply the information in this topic only to computers that have had the AppFabric 1.1 Caching Best Practices Analyzer run against them and are experiencing the issue addressed by this topic. For more information about best practices and scans, see Best Practices Analyzer.

Operating System

Windows Server 2008 R2

Product/Feature

Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server Caching

Severity

Warning

Category

Configuration

Issue

Seed node onloading is configured for a cluster with less than three hosts.

Impact

Cache operations might be negatively impacted.

Seed node onloading allows the cache cluster to remain available even if the cache cluster configuration store becomes temporarily inaccessible. It does this by using the lead hosts for the cluster management role. However, this use of lead hosts means that a majority of lead hosts must be running for the cache cluster to remain running. If you have less than three cache hosts, then this condition cannot be met if any one cache host goes down. For this reason, it is recommended to use offloading for small cache clusters with less than three hosts.

Resolution

Configure seed offloading for this cache cluster or add cache hosts so that the cluster has at least three or more hosts.

For more information, see Set the Cluster Management Role and Lead Host Designations (AppFabric 1.1).

Additional references

Lead Hosts and Cluster Management (AppFabric 1.1 Caching)

  2012-09-12