SharePoint 2010 Caching options

These are a few notes from Designing a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Infrastructure PDF. (Page’s 3-30 and 3-31)

There are 3 different types of caching options in SharePoint 2010. Two of these require publishing features.

1. (page) Output Caching
   1. Setting this to as small as 60 seconds can make a big difference on WFE servers load
   2. Page requests are stored in memory on the WFE server.
   3. Available with the Publishing feature enabled
   4. Memory based on WFE servers
   5. Cache Profiles
      1. Determine which users receive cached pages, etc. Set at the Site, Site collection, or web application level
2. Object cache
   1. Store lists/ libraries/ or page layouts on WFE server. Size adjusted at the site collection or web application level
   2. Available with the Publishing feature enabled
   3. Memory based on WFE servers
3. BLOB cache
   1. Better for media streaming (allows files to play before they are finished downloading). Possibly better for large files (depending on your SQL specs vs WFE).
   2. Default is 10GB and disabled
   3. Web application level
   4. Disk based on WFE servers
   1. Determine which users receive cached pages, etc. Set at the Site, Site collection, or web application level

More from MS: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261797.aspx