Introduction to Memcached: server side data caching

Memcached is a server side caching system that is free and open source, and can be installed on any VPS or dedicated server. A caching system can dramatically improve the performance of your website.

How does Memcached work?

Memcached stores the data in the memory and when the data is needed the application checks for the data in the memcache via its daemon. Memcached has the ability to store SQL queries, that way the next time the query is ran, it can return the result from memory.

Sometimes there’s confusion over Memcache and Memcached. Memcache is the PHP extension for Memcached. The two must be used together to function properly. Just installing Memcached will not improve your site’s performance. You must modify your coding to use memcached correctly.

Differences between Memcached and other caching systems

Other systems like APC, allow you direct access to the cached information. Memcached caches data and not parsed scripts as APC does. This makes Memcached perfect to optimize MySQL.Memcached is better suited for use with large caches that change versus APC which is not. For more information on APC please read our article.

How do I install Memcached?

If you are a VPS or dedicated customer and have root access to your server, you can install it yourself.We can install it for you, however in most cases it does require an installation fee due to the nature of the install.

If you are looking for a VPS solution, check out how we create a fast VPS.

If you need further assistance please feel free to contact support.