Optimising use and using multiple memcache servers in a pool

[Brian Moon]

> We are already using APC but I thought that memcached was doing something
> different.  In my context it is the difference between caching the PHP and the
> data from the mySQL database (which is what we are trying to protect).

APC has an api that allows you to store data much like memcached.  See: 
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.apc-fetch.php and related 
functions.  Since these are in process memory storage functions, they 
will be much faster than memcached.  However, having multiple copies of 
the data can cause many headaches.  You are also limiting yourself to a 
smaller total cache size.

8 servers with 128MB of memcached space means you have 1GB of total 
memcached space.  A pool of memcached servers does not duplicate data on 
to all the machines.  Instead, it stores different cached data on 
different machines based on algorithm.  There is no redundancy.

Brian.