Understanding the Distributed Cache service

The Distributed Cache service is used to improve performance by managing objects and data across MinRole configured servers, as well as servers included in your farm. From past engagements where I've reviewed a farm, I've seen that this service was either not set correctly or was non-existent because it had crashed. In one case, a site was down for many months due to this service and Microsoft Updates failing. It is a very important service, so you cannot leave this out when monitoring or planning a maintenance window that supports updates and/or changing the configuration of the service.

The Distributed Cache service is used to maintain a large amount of information on the server you have chosen to provide these services to in your farm. From a configuration standpoint, these servers can be standalone or used on a WFE tier server, where users interface with the farm at the site level. This service ensures that the...