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Should I Use memcached - a distributed memory object caching system?

memcached.org·Analyzed 2 hours ago·Based on 7 sources

memcached

Depends

Depends

A free, battle-tested distributed cache that fits teams with real database load and ops capacity to run it.

Free open-source distributed cache: excellent at scale if you can operate it; overkill for small apps.

Confidence: Medium

Free

Price

Open-source, self-hosted

10

Known CVEs

Newest listed by CVE.report

Cache Forge

Business support

Third party; price unpublished

EC2 AMI

Managed option

Pre-configured via Miri Infotech

Value for money5

Free; you pay only in ops time

Ease of use3

Simple protocol, but manual install and ops

Feature depth2

Simple key-value store by design

Support quality2

Community-driven; paid support via third parties

Security posture2

10 known CVEs; no security page found

Pros

  • Free and open-source; no license fees¹
  • Simple design promotes quick deployment and easy development¹
  • Pools cache across web farm; 50 servers yield 3.2GB usable cache²
  • Speeds dynamic web apps by alleviating database load⁷
  • Battle-tested; subject of academic thread-scalability and memory research⁵

Cons

  • In-memory key-value store only; no richer data features¹
  • Ten known vulnerabilities tracked publicly⁴
  • Official security page not found in sources reviewed³
  • Manual install, CLI configuration, self-managed; no first-party managed offering⁶

Gotchas

  • highNo first-party security page surfaced; you must track CVEs yourself³
  • mediumBusiness support sold separately through third party Cache Forge, price unpublished¹
  • mediumSlab classes can starve as object sizes change, effectively shrinking your cache⁵
  • mediumClassic per-web-server caching is wasteful; pooled deployment takes extra setup effort²

Best for

  • High-traffic web apps offloading database load
  • Teams pooling cache across many web servers
  • Devops-comfortable teams wanting zero license cost
  • Simple key-value caching at scale

Not for

  • Small apps better served by in-process caching
  • Teams needing persistence or rich data structures
  • Non-technical buyers expecting vendor SLA and support
  • Anyone wanting a fully managed, zero-ops service

Pricing

Self-hosted open source

$0

  • Full caching features
  • Community support only
  • You run and secure it

Business support (Cache Forge)

Not published

  • Paid support for development
  • Third-party vendor

Pre-configured EC2 AMI (Miri Infotech)

Not published

  • Ready-to-launch AMI
  • Bundled with MariaDB

Security

Ten known vulnerabilities tracked publicly; no official security page surfaced in sources reviewed.

  • Known CVEs tracked for Memcachedlists 10 of the newest known vulnerabilities associated with Memcached.⁴

What users say

Reviewed sources are official docs and setup tutorials; no independent user reviews or quotes were found.

Alternatives

Compare memcached - a distributed memory object caching system with each alternative.

Full analysis

Based on 7 public sources; mostly official docs and setup tutorials, with no independent user reviews found.

Sources

  1. memcached - official sitememcached.org
    official
  2. memcached about pagememcached.org
    official
  3. memcached security pagememcached.org
    security
  4. CVE.report - memcachedcve.report
    security
  5. Memcached paper review (MemC3)memcached.org
    official
  6. Memcached tutorial - DZonedzone.com
    review
  7. Memcached overview - Miri Infotechmiritech.com
    review

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