When I started to use the Get-CacheStatistics cmdlet to monitor caching activities more intensivley I was often confused. Here an example: Should not be ReadCount+WriteCount = RequestCount? Why is WriteRequestCount increasing +2 although I just send one put request? By talking to Microsoft support I figured out how AppFabric cache calculates its numbers (Thanks to Gayathri from Distributed Service Team). Number calculation behavior depends on your configuration, high availability and local cache have a major impact on it. Activity RequestCount  ReadRequestCount  WriteRequestCount  MissCount  DataCacheFactory is initialized and Named Cache is up  +1 - - - Put item, not yet in local and server cache +1 - +1 (+2 with HA) +1 Get item from local cache - - - - Get item from server cache, local cache has expired +1 +1 - - Get item, local and server cache has expired +1 +1 - +1 I hope this is helpful for you when you are analyzing the caching behavior f...

In Part one I have already described how to remove phantom apps here on more supplement. These phantom apps could also remain in the AppFabric Monitoring db: Just delete no longer needed entries in this table. Duplicate collection entry When you receive this kind of issue, like "[...] Cannot add duplicate collection entry [...]" you have defined the a configuration section twice in two different Web.config files in different places in your file system. Clear One easy solution is to use a clear statement . Searching for the inherited element There is a post in Microsoft's documentation which is explaining how to do it. Visual Studio in debug mode When you are working with Visual Studio in debug mode, which means you are just pressing F5 to run it on your local IIS instead of publishing it to a web server, you should keep in mind that e.g. your obj folder might contain more copies of your Web.config file. This could lead into this duplicate collectio...

While you are working with IIS installing and uninstalling web applications you might run into this issue on AppFabric Dashboard: Another example is this error message: There are two steps necessary to get a cleaned AppFabric Dashboard. Delete old virtual paths Old virtual paths might remain in %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\ApplicationHost.config. To get rid of these crappy virtual paths switch to command line tool and use the following script: C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv>appcmd.exe list vdir VDIR "Default Web Site/" (physicalPath:%SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot) VDIR "Default Web Site/Service/App1/" (physicalPath:C:\Service\App1) VDIR "Default Web Site/Service/App2" (physicalPath:C:\Service\App2) VDIR "Team Foundation Server/" (physicalPath:C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 12.0\Tools\Templates) VDIR "Team Foundation Server/tfs/" (physicalPath:C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Serve...

In my opinion it is really hard to get started with Windows Server AppFabric. There is good material, but it is shuffled around in different sources. A good intro can you find here: this all-in-one intro by Scott Hanslmann  this caching intro by Wade Wegener  Additional helpful resources are Microsoft's Introduction Part 1 and Microsoft's Introduction Part 2 by Jon Flanders  Pluralsight's Hosting Fundamentals   Pluralsight's Caching Introduction   Microsoft's Caching Documentation   Good books are Microsoft Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook   and Pro Windows Server: AppFabric Please also watch out for software updates, currently there is CU 4 . To keep yourself updated subscribe to Distributed Services News Feed . Updated my list on 11.03.2014 with one more Download the Windows Server AppFabric Samples

Windows Server AppFabric is a great enhancement for IIS and its caching capabilities are great for .NET applications. But currently there is a very annoying bug regarding its monitoring UI, so called “Dashboard”. Especially for me as a non WF guy (I am actually just working with WCF) it was really hard to figure it out. Hence, many thanks to Gianluca from Distributed Services at Microsoft! Windows Server AppFabric Dashboard does not work on Windows Server 2012 / Windows 8. You will receive this error message "Unable to cast object of type 'System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject' to type 'Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Management.Data.GroupByInfo'." This error will cause that you cannot see any request statistics neither WF nor for WCF: The reason is, I quote Microsoft here: "[...] the root cause is a powershell script embedded in AF code that returns different results when ran on Windows 2012. This script is about statistics for Idle & per...