Dealing with large media files? Like large images, videos, audio files? Are you having large CSS files and huge JS files to be stored and you think these files are eating your space and is also hindering your performance? Then BLOB caching will come as a savior. Let us understand our savior (BLOB Cache) in more detail.
What is BLOB Cache?
Let's start with the full form of it BLOB: Binary Large OBject. Having stated that, it's clear that a BLOB cache type will enable us to cache file types that are large in size. For example, media files, CSS files and so on. A BLOB cache will store the frequently used large files on the Web Front End Server's directory. This will ensure less traffic to the database servers. For this we will must enable the BLOB Cache on the Web Front End Server.
Apart from caching the large files, BLOB Cache supports other features like:
- Byte-range requests: Pause and play and starts the video from half and plays.
- Progressive Caching: Plays the video that is cached while the rest of the part will still be cached.
- Dividing the Video Files: Configures the size of the Video file division that will load the video in sections.
Note: If you are using Image Renditions, then BLOB Cache is the pre-requisite.
We can select the file types to be cached while configuring the BLOB Cache.
When to use a BLOB Cache
A BLOB Cache is recommended for the sites that:
- Have heavy traffic
- Maximum anonymous users
- Most of the contents are static contents.
- The image renditions feature is being used.
- Has many ready-only Media assets.
Best practices around BLOB Cache
- A drive where the BLOB cache must be stored should have sufficient disk space.
- Ensure the selected drive should be accessed by only a few processes.
- ULS Logging and BLOB Cache should be in separate drives.
- The maximum size should not be less than 10 GB, that is the default size.
- The maximum size of the BLOB cache should be 20% more than the expected growth.
How to enable BLOB Cache
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