Distributed Cache
A cache spread across multiple nodes that acts as a shared layer between application servers and the database. Redis Cluster and Memcached are common implementations.
What is Distributed Cache?
A cache spread across multiple nodes that acts as a shared layer between application servers and the database. Redis Cluster and Memcached are common implementations.
Distributed Cache is a foundational concept that sits in the Caching Strategies area of system design. Engineers reach for it whenever they need to reason about real-world trade-offs in that space — not just for textbook correctness, but because real production systems at companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Google make these decisions every day.
If you want to go deeper than this definition — with diagrams, code, and a quiz to lock it in — work through the "Distributed Cache" lesson linked below. It walks through the why, the mechanism, the trade-offs, and how the giants actually use it in production.
Learn Distributed Cache in depth
Full interactive lesson with diagrams, code examples, real-world references, and a quiz.
Open the Distributed Cache lessonRelated lessons
Lessons that touch on Distributed Cache as part of a larger topic.
Application-Level Caching
Distributed caching with Redis and Memcached, the shared brain across your servers
foundation · caching strategies
Memcached
The original distributed cache, simple, fast, and proven at Facebook-scale for nearly two decades
foundation · caching strategies
Hazelcast
An embedded distributed cache for Java applications, your cache lives inside your application, not on a separate server
foundation · caching strategies
Apache Ignite
Distributed cache meets SQL engine, when you need to query your cache, not just look up keys
foundation · caching strategies
Coherence
Oracle's enterprise distributed cache, built for Java EE applications that demand transactional consistency
foundation · caching strategies
See also
Related glossary terms you might want to look up next.
Redis
An in-memory data store used as a cache, message broker, and database. Blazing fast because everything lives in RAM.
Memcached
A simple, high-performance distributed memory caching system. Stores key-value pairs in RAM. Simpler than Redis but less feature-rich.
Consistent Hashing
A hashing technique where adding or removing servers only moves a small fraction of keys. Used by Amazon DynamoDB and Cassandra for data distribution.