Multiple Content Caching Servers

ewettach
New Contributor III

Hopefully an easy question, but I can't seem to find the answer. We currently have one content caching server running on let's say VLAN 5. If we were to add another content caching server to VLAN 5, would iOS devices on VLAN 5 use both content caching servers thus improve app updates and deliveries to client devices? In summary.... is there a benefit to multiple caching servers on the same VLAN.

Thanks!

2 REPLIES 2

ryan_ball
Valued Contributor

They would see both caching servers as long as they are set up similarly and are serving the same public IPs. The way it would work would be, they would both have the same "rank" as far as the client was concerned. A client would query the caching server with the lowest rank, so in this case it could be either, then if the caching server did not have the content it could look at its peers (you should set up peering) and if the other server has it, it can serve the client. If neither server has it, one would download the content on the client's behalf and serve it to the client.

If you have one server set up for a month or so, you can see the performance indicators in Activity Monitor.app. Look at the pressure metric. If that is much above 20%, then you might need more caching storage (more disk space). More caching servers would help keep the pressure lower, if that it even an issue for you. If you don't see much pressure at all, and your metrics are not going crazy in Activity Monitor.app, then one might cut it.

ryan_ball
Valued Contributor

By the way, if you set up a new server, you can reboot a client machine, open terminal, and run the following command to view which servers it sees:

AssetCacheLocatorUtil