Cache Tuner User Guide

Challenge:

Since last couple of weeks,  was reading and understanding on Sitecore Caching — Really Sitecore guys did a great job! It’s really cool implementation, once you understood it correctly!

If you are new to Sitecore Caching and want to know Sitecore Caching basics read my earlier article here.

As we all know that Caching plays a vital role in Sitecore world to improve performance and have better user experience. We’ve observed that due to Cache Size Tunings complexity process people are not tuning Cache size even though they have plenty of RAM available.

This module is the implementation of the rules given in Sitecore Caching guide [Wanted to read basics of Sitecore Cache Size tuning? read my earlier article here.]. So, If you would like to check whether their cache sizes are being utilized or not. If utilized then how much amount of Cache Tuning is required. Then this tool is for you!

The tool does calculations and suggests everything you need to do for fine cache size tuning. Which earlier we used to do manually.

I’ve penned down this article which describes How to use Cache Tuner module? UI Basics? How it works? (You must be thinking why one should learn new tool rather than doing it on his/her self? If so keep reading this article, download tool, try using it and then ask this question to yourself again! 🙂 I’m sure you will find answer automatically! If not will try to answer your questions/suggestions/ideas and incorporate them in tool!)

Solution:

Main Features

• Suggests by color: (Red == Alert (Needs urgent attention), Green == Normal (You can Ignore them), Orange == Warning (No problem as of now. But it can be – Let’s be proactive!)).
• Total of all data at bottom! (Total Size, Delta, and Max Size).
• Data can be exported as CSV along with all suggestions and shared with in team/ if someone would like to do more analysis, he/she can do by using power of Excel!
• No Manual Cache Calculations, tool does it for you! as per Sitecore recommendations.

How to Download and Install?

• You can download package from here
• It contains one .aspx page with name as CacheTuner.aspx.
• You can copy this page and paste it in your Webroot\Sitecore\admin folder. [Just a note : you can deploy it on any directory you wish to. But better to put under admin folder as it is secure folder, and as this page is using Single file model. It won’t restart/recycle your application.].
• Access your page using  http:///sitecore/admin/cachetuner.aspx.
• For details understanding of UI please refer UI Basics? section.
• That’s it! Enjoy! 🙂

Screen shots

• Suggests by color: (Red == Alert (Needs urgent attention), Green == Normal (You can Ignore them), Orange == Warning (No problem as of now. But it can be – Let’s be proactive!)).

• Total of all data at bottom! (Total Size, Delta, and Max Size).

• Data can be exported as CSV along with all suggestions and shared with in team/ if someone would like to do more analysis, he/she can do by using power of Excel!

UI Basics?

Cache Tuner module has few columns and each column’s description is as below:

Column Name	Description
Name	A unique string that identifies each cache. Sitecore cache works on collection. Suppose you are dealing with HashTable where you have Key/Value Pair. Where Key is an identifier and Value is an Object. This name indicates Key.
Count	The number of items in the cache.
Size	The approximate current size of the cache.
Delta	The approximate change in the size of the cache since the last refresh of the cache administration page. In Bytes. Open page first time and then click on refresh [By clicking on Refresh button at top]. If Delta value goes in negative then it means that Sitecore removed some values from Cache entries to allocate another cache values. It indicates your Cache Size for that key is not enough.
MaxSize	The approximate limit to the size of the cache. Comes from your Caching Configuration.
Severity	This suggests Severity of current cache size. It can have following three values: Red == Alert (Needs urgent attention). Green == Normal (You can Ignore them) Orange == Warning (No problem as of now. But it can be – Let’s be proactive!))
Suggestion	Suggestions gives you brief of your problem and suggests you why you need to fine tune this cache size (Delta fluctuation/>80% usage of Max Size(Alert)/> 50% Usage of Max Size (Warning)

How it works?

This tool provides Cache Tuning suggestions on following logic:

1. If Size is consumed grater than 80% – Red (Alert).

2. If Delta fluctuates – Red (Alert).

3. If Size is consumed grater than 50% – Orange (Warning).

4. Else Green (Normal).

I would like to hear from you

If your feedback is positive tell to your peers else tell to me at : klpatil@hotmail.com. Feel free to post your suggestions/comments/bugs at provided email id.

Thanks to Sitecore Support, Sitecore Forum, (Both of this source only helped me to clear my Caching Basics) and my colleagues cum friends (Varun, Krunal, and Nilesh) for helping me out on this tool! 🙂

Happy Cache Size Tuning! 🙂