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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Windows Server AppFabric provides a set of integrated capabilities that extend IIS and the Windows Server platform making it easier to build, scale and manage composite applications today. Windows Server AppFabric delivers the first wave of innovation within an exciting new middleware paradigm which brings performance, scalability and enhanced management capabilities to the platform for applications built on the .NET Framework using Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation.'Microsoft Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook' shows you how to get the most from WCF and WF services using Windows Server AppFabric leveraging the capabilities for building composite solutions on the .NET platform. Packed with over 60 task-based and immediately reusable recipes, 'Microsoft Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook' starts by showing you how to set up your development environment to start using Windows Server AppFabric quickly. The book then moves on to provide comprehensive coverage of the most important capabilities provided by Windows Server AppFabric, diving right in to hands-on topics such as deploying WCF and WF applications to Windows Server AppFabric and leveraging the distributed caching, scalable hosting, persistence, monitoring and management capabilities that Windows Server AppFabric has to offer, with recipes covering a full spectrum of complexity from simple to intermediate and advanced.
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Table of Contents
Microsoft Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook
Microsoft Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: July 2012
Production Reference: 1190712
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Cover Image by Artie Ng ( <[email protected]> )
Credits
Authors
Hammad Rajjoub
Rick G. Garibay
Reviewers
Adnan Masood
Zubair Ahmed
Alvin Lau
Acquisition Editors
Sarah Cullington
Kerry George
Lead Technical Editor
Azharuddin Sheikh
Technical Editors
Joyslita D'Souza
Unnati Shah
Project Coordinator
Joel Goveya
Proofreader
Aaron Nash
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Graphics
Valentine D'silva
Manu Joseph
Production Coordinator
Nilesh R. Mohite
Cover Work
Nilesh R. Mohite
Foreword
Have you ever set foot in the kitchen with a certain hunger and found that you had no clue as to how to make that dish? At such a time a cookbook is a wonderful thing. That's why I appreciate this concept of a cookbook for workflows and services. At Microsoft when we build products they are often chocked full of little known but wonderful capabilities and guys like Hammad and Rick are just the sort of chefs that have what it takes to make you successful with it. AppFabric brings some terrific capabilities to Windows Server and IIS with distributed caching and terrific hosting features for WCF Services and WCF Workflow Services at no additional cost, so using it is a no-brainer but maximizing it will take the kind of insight you will find in this book. So break out the mixing bowls, spatulas, and turn on the oven... I can almost smell success from here.
Ron Jacobs
Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
About the Authors
Hammad Rajjoub works as an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, he was awarded Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional award, seven years in a row. Along with being an MVP he was also a Microsoft Business Platform Technology Advisor. Being an MVP in Connected Systems gave him early access to Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, as well as Windows Server AppFabric. In his previous roles he has been a CTO at a technology startup, Vice President at one of the largest financial institutions, as well as a Solutions Architect at a leading consulting company.
He has over a decade of experience using Microsoft Technologies, especially .NET since its beta 1 release. He is a published author and a frequent speaker at technology conferences (including TechEd and Cloud Computing Asia). He has founded a number of developer and architect communities over the years and remains a passionate speaker and contributor at local technical communities in Singapore. He is also an active member of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) - Singapore Chapter. His areas of interest include Cloud Computing, Enterprise Architecture, Design Patterns, and Quantum Computation.
At home he is a busy husband and father of twin girls and a baby boy. For more details visit his website at http://www.hammadrajjoub.net or on twitter: @hammadrajjoub.
Alhamdulillah - This work would not have been possible without the help and support from my family. Special thanks to my mother Noor and my wife Iman for being supportive and giving me time and help to complete this book.
I would also like to express my gratitude to my friend and co-author of this book, Rick Garibay, for accepting my invitation to co-author this book and sharing his feedback throughout the lifecycle of this book. Also, special thanks to Adnan Masood, Zubair Ahmed, and Alvin Lau for technically reviewing the book, providing feedback, and correcting numerous mistakes.
Last but not the least, thanks to the editorial and project team at Packt Publishing for giving me the opportunity to write this book, and also being patient and understanding through the process of writes, re-writes, technical edits, as well as cases of missed deadlines.
Rick G. Garibay is a developer, architect, speaker, and author on distributed technologies and is the General Manager of the national Connected Systems Practice at Neudesic. With over 13 years' experience delivering distributed solutions across industry sectors such as finance, transportation, hospitality, and gaming, he specializes in distributed technologies such as Microsoft .NET, Windows Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation, and Windows Azure to help his clients deliver business value and drive revenue while reducing operational costs.
As a five-time Microsoft Connected Systems MVP, he is an active speaker, writer, and passionate community advocate and is the Co-Founder of the Phoenix Connected Systems User Group (pcsug.org), celebrating four years in operation. He serves as an advisor to Microsoft in a number of roles as a member of the Microsoft Application Platform Partner Advisory Council and long-time member of the Business Platform Advisors and Azure Technology Advisors groups.
Recent presentations include talks at the Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference, Microsoft TechEd, Dev Connections, .NET Rocks, Desert Code Camp, and numerous Microsoft events and user groups throughout North America. He is a frequent contributor to industry publications such as CODE Magazine and maintains a blog at http://rickgaribay.net. You can catch up with Rick on Twitter @rickggaribay.
I would like to thank my loving, patient, and amazing wife Christie for being my rock and providing a foundation which has allowed us to grow a beautiful family while enduring the sometimes overbearing demands of my career. I'm also grateful to my wonderful children, Sarah and Ricky for tolerating the many lost nights and weekends holed up in my home office working on this book.
I would also like to thank Mickey Williams, VP Technology Platform Group at Neudesic for his support in taking on this project along with his words of encouragement and (always timely) sense of humor along the way.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my friend and co-author, Hammad Rajjoub for inviting me to participate in this project and trusting me to help carry out his vision for this book. Hammad and I both share a labor of love as it applies to the Microsoft distributed technology stack affectionately (and somewhat nostalgically) known as "Connected Systems" and this book is both a reflection and an acknowledgment of the tremendous work the WCF, WF, and Dublin teams have done in putting these tremendous capabilities within reach of developers tasked with solving tough distributed challenges today.
About the Reviewers
Adnan Masood is a Software Engineer and Architect with zeal for solving interesting algorithmic, business, and technology problems. With special interest in scalable architectures, algorithm design, application security, and software development, he has over a decade of hands-on experience in financial services and application service providers. He currently works as a System Architect for Green Dot Corporation, a leading pre-paid financial institution where he develops robust, scalable, and secure SOA based middle-tier architectures, distributed systems, and web applications. He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and holds various technical certifications including MCPD (Enterprise Developer), MCSD .NET, and SCJP-II. He is attributed and published in print media and on the Web; he also taught Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) courses at the University of California, San Diego.
He regularly presents at local code camps and user groups. He is actively involved in the .NET community as Co-founder and President of the of San Gabriel Valley .NET Developers group and recipient of the INETA Community Champion Award for contributions to the developer community in Southern California.
He holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Machine Learning; specifically interestingness measures in outliers using belief networks. He also holds systems architecture certification from MIT and SOA Migration, Adoption, and Reuse Technique certificate from SEI, Carnegie Melon University. He can be reached at <[email protected]>.
Alhamdullilah - Thanks to my family for their constant support during the process of editing this book. I would also like to thank Hammad for the opportunity and both Hammad and Rick for putting up with my feedback and tech edits. Last but not least, thank you Joel for your great project coordination skills.
Zubair Ahmed is an experienced software developer, blogger, and technical presenter. His interests include software architecture, improving code quality, and keeping an eye on the latest technologies. He works as a Software Consultant for Infusion Development in Dubai. When he is not working he likes to spend time in front of his large monitor at home writing some code, go for long drives with his wife, or socialize with friends.
His technical blog is at zubairahmed.net and his tweet handle is @zubairdotnet.
For technology updates, subscribe to his Facebook page at http://facebook.com/zubair.ahmed.public.
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Preface
Windows Server AppFabric is an extension of the Application Server Role on the Windows Server Platform. In a nutshell, Windows Server AppFabric frees Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) Service developers from common infrastructure plumbing by providing a robust, secure, composable, and reliable platform which provides caching, hosting, and monitoring capabilities, including support for long running workflow services, all on the Windows Platform. As such, Windows Server AppFabric is an evolution of the Windows Server platform, providing essential building blocks for first-classing WCF (for code-based services) and WF (for declarative workflow services) that are built using the .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010.
As an extension to IIS and WAS, Windows Server AppFabric relies on IIS's proven capabilities for hosting and lifecycle management, adding additional useful capabilities for working with WCF and WF services. In addition, Windows Server AppFabric takes advantage of Windows Server's robust event tracing mechanism (also known as ETW). ETW provides optimized and high-performing kernel-level instrumentation which greatly minimizes impact on the performance of WCF and WF services hosted in IIS with Windows Server AppFabric.
Whether you are a developer who wants to avoid the same repetitive tasks when preparing your WCF and/or WF services for deployment, or an IT Pro who wants to avoid complex XML for configuring hosting and monitoring options for the services you manage, you will instantly benefit from Windows Server AppFabric. Best of all, Microsoft has made this key extension to the Windows Server Platform available free of charge.
Written by both a former MVP and now Architect Evangelist with Microsoft and a five-time Connected Systems Developer MVP, the authors of this book both worked very closely with Microsoft during the development of the product (then codenamed "Dublin") participating in Software Design Reviews and early incubation initiatives. Hammad and Rick have advised customers of all shapes and sizes and fielded these capabilities in countless projects across various verticals in the two years since its general availability.
This book is full of practical, step-by-step guidance including useful tips and techniques that will allow you to build scalable, reliable, and secure service-oriented applications on the Windows Server Platform with IIS and Windows Server AppFabric.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Installing Windows Server AppFabric, covers setting up your development environment to use Windows Server AppFabric. You'll learn how to install hosting, persistence and monitoring capabilities, including provisioning repositories, choosing the appropriate storage options, making changes to configuration after installation, and troubleshooting common (and not so common) installation issues you might encounter along the way.
Chapter 2, Getting Started with AppFabric Caching, introduces Caching in Windows Server AppFabric, covering everything you need to get started with introducing this important capability to your composite applications and services. You will learn how to set up and use Caching using code and configuration options, as well as working with Caching within your applications. In addition, you'll learn how easily an existing application that relies on ASP.NET session state can immediately benefit from Windows Server AppFabric Cache, handling common error conditions, using PowerShell commandlets, and building a custom provider model.
Chapter 3, Windows Server AppFabric Caching — Advanced Use Cases, builds on the concepts in the previous chapter, covering the use of Regions and Tags as well as choosing the right concurrency mode and establishing expiration, eviction, and notification policies. You will also learn advanced monitoring concepts including the use of performance counters, configuring high availability, and common troubleshooting techniques for getting the most out of Windows Server AppFabric Cache.
Chapter 4, Windows Server AppFabric Hosting Fundamentals, introduces Windows Server AppFabric's hosting capabilities, covering common deployment, management, and hosting scenarios. You'll learn how to host WCF SOAP and REST services as well as simple WF services along with a number of tips and tricks for moving beyond the service template defaults.
Chapter 5, More Windows Server AppFabric Hosting Features, covers additional hosting topics, including supporting long-running WF services, how your services can benefit from the Auto-Start feature, properly hosting WCF services that take advantage of Windows Azure Service Bus Relay bindings for enabling modern, hybrid scenarios as well as common PowerShell commandlets for scripting many of the tasks covered in this and the previous chapter.
Chapter 6, Utilizing AppFabric Persistence, provides ample coverage of Windows Server AppFabric persistence capabilities, including configuring persistence for WF services, working with multiple persistence stores, and developing instance store, control, and query providers. This chapter also provides an in-depth walkthrough of development and configuration of custom instance, control, and query providers.
Chapter 7, Monitoring Windows Server AppFabric Deployment, provides an introduction to the monitoring capabilities provided by Windows Server AppFabric. Topics include collecting and viewing events from WCF and WF services, enabling tracing and configuring tracking profiles, and leveraging PowerShell cmdlets for monitoring WCF and WF services as well as the Caching service. In addition, you'll learn how to surface monitoring information to any user experience by following the sample recipe for building a custom monitoring dashboard using ASP.NET MVC and OData.
Chapter 8, Scaling AppFabric Hosting, Monitoring, and Persistence, covers a common scenario for scaling Windows Server AppFabric across multiple IIS hosts. You will learn how to prepare two hosts for clustering using Microsoft NLB as well as understand deployment, management, and administration of a multi-host Windows Server AppFabric deployment that shares a common, centralized persistence store.
Chapter 9, Configuring Windows Server AppFabric Security, covers what you need to know about planning and implementing a security model with Windows Server AppFabric. You will learn how to secure the caching, persistence, monitoring, and eventing (via ETW) subsystems of Windows Server AppFabric.
What you need for this book
This book assumes you have a solid foundation in messaging and workflow concepts and are proficient in developing web services with WCF 4.0 and WF 4.0, in addition to C#, the .NET Framework, and Visual Studio 2010. You will need a Windows 7 (or Windows Server 2008/R2) machine configured for IIS 7 along with SQL Server and Visual Studio 2010, as well as either Windows Server AppFabric or Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server.
To take advantage of the latest caching features introduced in AppFabric 1.1, it is recommended that you install Microsoft AppFabric 1.1. for Windows Server. Otherwise, Windows Server AppFabric (the first version of this release) will suffice and is the product name we use throughout this book.
Either version can be installed on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista R2, or Windows Server 2008 R2 and they support both 32- and 64-bit architectures. You will also need Microsoft .NET Framework v4, IIS7, and Windows PowerShell 2.0. In terms of hardware, officially, any 1GHz+ CPU (900MHz+ for Dual Core and 700MHz+ for Quad Core) with 2 GB of RAM will be sufficient to get up and running. However, it is recommended that you have at least 4 GB of RAM to run Windows Server AppFabric or Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server.
Who this book is for
Whether you are an architect or developer designing and developing composite solutions with WCF and WF services or an IT Pro tasked with their deployment and maintenance; or designing and implementing a distributed caching strategy for your .NET services and applications, this book is for you.
This book does not assume any prior knowledge of Windows Server AppFabric; however, a basic understanding of .NET Framework 4.0, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) technologies is required.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "Once the Caching service is up and running, we can query it for the caches that are available in this cluster by using the Get-Cache command."
A block of code is set as follows:
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "In IIS, click on the application and select Features View."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Installing Windows Server AppFabric
In this chapter, we will cover:
Introduction
Windows Server AppFabric is an extension of the Application server role on the Microsoft Platform. Windows Server AppFabric offers in-memory, super-fast, scalable caching capabilities for web applications and services. For applications built using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Server AppFabric provides streamlined hosting and monitoring capabilities that support composition scenarios.
Windows Server AppFabric is built on top of an existing set of technologies on the Windows platform including, but not limited to Internet Information Services (IIS), Windows Process Activation Service (WAS), .NET Framework v 4.0, and Event Tracing for Windows (ETW).
In this chapter, we will look at how to set up Windows Server AppFabric using the different configuration options. We will also see how the configuration of Windows Server AppFabric can be changed after the installation. Lastly, at the end of the chapter, we will see how to troubleshoot some common problems with Windows Server AppFabric installations.
Installing Windows Server AppFabric
Windows Server AppFabric is an extension of the Application Server role on the Windows platform. At the time of this writing there are two ways to install Windows Server AppFabric. One is the standard direct install and the other is using Microsoft's new and exciting Web Platform Installer (WPI).
In this recipe, we will go through the step-by-step instructions to install Windows Server AppFabric using WPI. Needless to say, if you already have Windows Server AppFabric installed on your machine, then you can skip this recipe.
Note
WPI is the preferred approach because it streamlines the installation process by smartly identifying and installing the prerequisite software.
Getting ready
Windows Server AppFabric can be installed on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 SP 2, Windows Vista R2, and Windows Server 2008 R2 (it supports both 32 and 64 bit architectures). You will also need Microsoft .NET Framework v4, IIS7, and Windows PowerShell 2.0. In terms of hardware, officially, any 1GHz+ CPU (900MHz+ for Dual Core and 700MHz+ for Quad Core) with 2 GB of RAM will be sufficient to get up and running with Windows Server AppFabric. However, it is recommended that you have at least 4 GB of RAM to run Windows Server AppFabric.
Note
If you want to try Windows Server AppFabric before actually installing it on your host machine, it makes sense to use a virtual machine that has Windows Server AppFabric installed on it so that you can play with it. The good news is that Microsoft has made a preconfigured Windows Server AppFabric VM available on MSDN that can be downloaded and used with Microsoft's Virtual PC. This download is available as a part of Microsoft's training kit for Windows Server AppFabric. The download is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=7956.
How to do it...
WPI offers a highly streamlined package/software download installation mechanism. You can get WPI from Microsoft's website at: http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx. After downloading and installing WPI, you can use the following steps to launch Windows Server AppFabric Installer:
Note
The list of components, third-party application software, and Microsoft products will vary from machine to machine. WPI will determine the missing software and will list it on this screen.
How it works...
The Windows Server AppFabric installation adds three new Windows services: AppFabric Caching Service, AppFabric Event Collection Service, and AppFabric Workflow Management Service, for caching, monitoring, and hosting scenarios respectively. These services can be seen when the Services Snap-in is launched from the Control Panel (or by typing Services.msc in the search box under the Windows Start menu).
As we can see in the preceding screenshot, only AppFabric Event Collection Service and AppFabric Workflow Management Service have Status as Started and have Startup Type defined as Automatic. By default, Windows Server AppFabric Caching Service is not available for use after a machine reboot.
Note
AppFabric Event Collection Service, AppFabric Workflow Management Service, and Windows Server AppFabric Caching Service form the heart of Windows Server AppFabric. These services work in the background and perform tasks such as collecting events, managing the workflow's life cycle, connecting to the cache cluster, and serving cache related requests.
Once Windows Server AppFabric is installed, the next step is to configure it using the Windows Server AppFabric Configuration wizard.
Configuring Windows Server AppFabric (hosting and monitoring)
There are a number of configuration options available when configuring Windows Server AppFabric, and in this recipe we will go through them. At this point, we should appreciate Microsoft's efforts in designing Windows Server AppFabric, as it allows a fair bit of customization.
Getting ready
Configuring Windows Server AppFabric is available via the Windows Server AppFabric Configuration wizard. It is a fairly simple task, but it requires careful consideration of a number of options and possibilities. We will need the following items ready in order to configure Windows Server AppFabric:
Note
When HA (High Availability) is enabled Windows Server AppFabric Cache stores a copy of each cached object or region in a separate cache host. HA is discussed in detail in Chapter 7, Monitoring Windows Server AppFabric Deployment.
Note
It should be noted that when you run the Windows Server AppFabric Configuration wizard and make changes to the configuration, it will overwrite any existing values.
How to do it...
To launch the Window Servers AppFabric Configuration wizard, go to All programs under the Start menu, find AppFabric, and then select Configure AppFabric.
The following is a sequence of steps that will take you through the configuration wizard for Windows Server AppFabric:
Note
Windows Server AppFabric by design allows adding multiple providers for monitoring and persistence. Configuring multiple persistence providers is discussed in Chapter 5, More Windows Server AppFabric Hosting Features.
Note
The SQL database (specified above in steps 11 and 12) is used to store Windows Server AppFabric monitoring related information. The Initialize monitoring store option will initialize the database with the monitoring schema.
Note
Windows Server AppFabric's AS_Administrators is a conceptual and administrative role. As the name implies it allows full control over AppFabric's configuration, monitoring, and persistence capabilities. Event Collection and Workflow Persistence services run under this role.
Likewise, AS_Observer is also a conceptual and administrative role. It allows you to view the application and services configuration, monitor data, as well as view persisted instances, all without being able to modify anything.
How it works...
The configuration of Windows Server AppFabric provides contextual information to run Windows Server AppFabric services that are responsible for monitoring and hosting services. The values that we configured can be changed later, either by running the AppFabric Configuration wizard again or by using Windows Server AppFabric PowerShell commandlets (Cmdlets).
Note
Windows PowerShell is built on top of Microsoft.NET and offers a task based command-line shell and scripting language. Windows PowerShell has built in commands called Cmdlets (pronounced as commandlets). Cmdlets are lightweight commands and typically return a Microsoft.NET Framework object type to the next command in the pipeline.
It should be noted that monitoring and persistence services should be run under accounts with administrative privileges so that they can read and persist events to the preconfigured monitoring and persistence databases.
Configuring Windows Server AppFabric (caching)
Once you have finished configuring the Hosting Services as discussed in the preceding recipe, the next task is to configure the Caching Services for AppFabric. Just like in the preceding recipe, we will select a service account that should be part of the administrator group so that it has an administrative access to the caching configuration provider. Once again we will consider a workstation configuration and select a valid local system account.
We will see how to setup the Caching Configuration Store Provider. At the end of this recipe, we will also see how to join/create a new cache cluster (that this, the instance of Window Server AppFabric Cache is part of) along with the end point details (that is, port addresses) used by AppFabric services to communicate on the network.
Once we have configured Windows Server AppFabric Caching Services, we will be able to start using AppFabric Caching.
Getting ready
To begin this recipe, we will need the following in place:
How to do it...
To set up Windows Server AppFabric Caching follow these steps:
Note
You cannot directly select Caching Service Configuration from the left-hand navigation panel on the Windows Server AppFabric Configuration Wizard.
Note
We discuss the use of SQL Server AppFabric Caching Service Configuration Store Provider in more detail in Chapter 7, Monitoring Windows Server AppFabric Deployment.
Note
The Cache port is used for transmitting data between Cache Clients and Cache Hosts. The Cluster port enables Cache Cluster formation and Management. The Arbitration port is used to double check if the Cache Host is unavailable. Arbitration is used when the Cache Host fails. The Replication Host is used to move data between the Cache Hosts. Replication is used when Cache is configured for High Availability.
Note
If you are using any third-party (non-Microsoft) firewall then you will need to manually update the firewall rules. This must be done to allow Windows Server AppFabric to use the ports that were specified during its configuration.
Note
The High Availability feature of Windows Server AppFabric Caching can only be enabled on Enterprise versions of Windows Server 2008/2008 R2. This implies that all the nodes in the cluster must have enterprise editions of Windows Server 2008/2008 R2. For more information you may refer to: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=164929.
How it works...
The Windows Server AppFabric Caching Service requires a service account to run its Windows service as well as a configuration provider where it can store its configuration. As the caching service runs under the identity of the provided account, the account must have administrative privileges so that it can access and modify the configuration.
The Windows Server AppFabric Caching Service needs to identify which ports to connect to in order to communicate with the other hosts in the cluster. Once the port numbers are specified, ensure that any software or hardware firewalls are not blocking these ports.
As we experienced in this recipe, the Windows Server AppFabric Caching Service is highly configurable and the configuration wizard makes it extremely easy to set up (or change) the existing configuration.
Now that we have configured Services for AppFabric and all the services are up and running under valid service accounts along with firewall rule definitions, we can now start coding to test and start consuming the caching service.
