Hello All!
Welcome back to LinuxTechi! Caching of data is highly important for any website or application out there as it can largely help in reduce the server load. In this article, we’ll be looking at the top 5 open source linux caching tools recommended by linux system administrators or geeks. So, without wasting much time, let’s jump directly into the article.
5) Varnish Cache
Varnish cache finds the fifth position in our list of the top 5 open source linux caching tools recommended by Linux system administrators. It is a popular HTTP accelerator used in more than 3 million websites. Administrators say that adding the Varnish cache increases the website to a considerable extent.
As the name implies, this caching HTTP reverse proxy tool will store the contents of a website when you visit a website. Next time when you visit the website again, if there are no changes made in the web page, then you will be getting the content only from the cache and not from the website.
This means that the content delivery is lightning fast and you don’t need to wait for the content to be downloaded from the server. It is open-source and highly flexible and serves as a versatile tool as well. It is compatible with all modern Linux distros, Solaris, and FreeBSD platforms.
Remote Dictionary Server (Redis) doesn’t come with a native support for SSL, but it provides able support to logging, authentication and authorization using VMODS. It can also act as a web application firewall as well as a load balancer.
What We Like
- Open Source
- Highly flexible
- Excellent performance
- Compatible with OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris etc
- Supports logging
What We Don’t Like
- No native support for SSL/TLS
4) Hazelcast IMDG
Next in our list is another open-source in-memory data grid called Hazelcast IMDG. It is highly powerful, quick, lightweight, and extendable as well. One of the major highlights of this linux caching tool is that it is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and all platforms that has got Java installed.
The main advantage of using Hazelcast IMDG is for its incredible speed as you don’t want to rely on any remote storage and can handle millions of transactions per second. With Hazelcast you get a restart rate faster by 2.5X times faster than your SSDs.
You can easily upgrade the cluster nodes without needing to worry about disrupting the services. Admins are provided with a management center to quickly have a look at the cluster activities, REST APIs and configurable watermarks as well.
What We Like
- Quickest
- Highly scalable IMDG
- Continuous processing
- Hassle-free upgrade process
- 5x faster restart times than SSDs
- Compatible with Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory for RAM
- Easy to use
- Clear documentation
What We Don’t Like
- Lower consistency
3) Couchbase
When it comes to caching, most companies choose Couchbase as it is highly reliable caching tool. It comes with a built-in layer specially designed for caching that provides the core-functionality to high-speed reading and writing of data. The Couchbase server works with the disk space utility to ensure that the caching layer always has adequate space to store the cached data.
In Couchbase server, the cached data is stored in a key-value format. It is highly compatible with Linux and with other platforms like Windows and Mac OS X. It makes use of N1QL, a highly sophisticated and a feature-rich query language for indexing and querying content from the database.
What We Like
- Asynchronous
- Monitors data access constantly
- Easy to use
- Excellent performance
- Better than MongoDB
- Quick deploy
What We Don’t Like
- Limited full-text search capability
- Advanced data modeling
2) Memcached
The caching tool that takes the coveted second place in our list of the top 5 open source linux caching tools recommended by Linux system administrators is Memcached. There is always a debate among system administrators that whether Redis or Memcached is the best caching tool for linux.
It is one of the most-powerful, open-source caching tools available for the linux platform. It comes equipped with a distributed memory object caching functionality that stores data in small chunks in the form of key values.
Quick result sets from a database query or API calls are mostly placed in these key values for quick retrieval of data. It is highly compatible with various platforms like Linux, Mac OS X, Windows etc.
One of the highlights of Memcached is that it reduces the load on the database as it acts as a short-term memory for data access by applications and websites. It also provides API access for many other programming languages.
What We Like
- Ease of use
- Highly reliable
- Sub-millisecond latency
- Data Partitioning
- Supports various programming languages
- Stable
- Excellent performance
What We Don’t Like
- Supports only lazy eviction
- Supports only string data type
Also Read : How to Install Memcached (Caching Server) on CentOS 8
1) Redis
The number one Linux caching tool that tops our list is Redis (Remote Dictionary Server). It is completely free, open-source and compatible with various programming languages.When compared with Memcached, Redis supports various data types including string, list, set, hash and sorted set. Even though both Memcached and Redis provides supports for in-memory data store and key value data stores, Redis seems to be more accurate than the former. Another highlight with Redis is that provides support for data persistency. It is compatible with Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X.
What We Like
- Incredibly fast
- High performance
- Data Persistence
- Supports various data types
- Cluster management
- Ease of use
- Data partitioning
What We Don’t Like
- Not the best cross DC replication capabilities
- Handling of 1M r/s is poor
Also Read: How to Install Redis Server on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8
Final Thoughts
After we reviewed several caching tools and other tools provided in the list above, we can conclude that Redis is the best among the best as it is extremely fast and offers excellent performance. Caching tools are highly beneficial and adds a lot of value to applications and websites as they can largely reduce the use of network bandwidth, latency, and server load as well.
I hope the information provided above gives you a basic idea about the best open source linux caching tools. And the tools listed are not recommended by several linux administrators, but we’ve also analyzed and installed each and every tool along with various other tools for this review. Please share your valuable comments and suggestions in the feedback section below.
