Co-located cache not working in web role

Question

My sessions are not being cached. I am using co-located caching on my web role.

I have the following in my web.config:

<configSections>
  <section name="cacheDiagnostics" type="Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.AzureCommon.DiagnosticsConfigurationSection, Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.AzureCommon" allowLocation="true" allowDefinition="Everywhere" />
</configSections>
...
<dataCacheClients>
  <dataCacheClient name="default">
    <autoDiscover isEnabled="true" identifier="Website" />
  </dataCacheClient>
</dataCacheClients>

My cloud service definition (.csdef) is as follows:

<ServiceDefinition name="WebCloud.Test" ...>
  <WebRole name="Website" vmsize="Small">
    <Sites>
      <Site name="Web">
        <Bindings>
          <Binding name="Endpoint1" endpointName="Endpoint1" />
        </Bindings>
      </Site>
    </Sites>
    <Endpoints>
      <InputEndpoint name="Endpoint1" protocol="http" port="80" />
    </Endpoints>
    <Imports>
      <Import moduleName="Caching" />
    </Imports>
    <Startup priority="-2">
      <Task commandLine="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Caching\ClientPerfCountersInstaller.exe install" executionContext="elevated" taskType="simple" />
    </Startup>
  </WebRole>
</ServiceDefinition>

And the following in the ConfigurationSettings of the cscfg file:

<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Caching.ConfigStoreConnectionString" value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=http;AccountName=ACCOUNTNAME;AccountKey=ACCOUNTKEY==" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Caching.ClientDiagnosticLevel" value="1" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Caching.NamedCaches" value="{&quot;caches&quot;:[{&quot;name&quot;:&quot;default&quot;,&quot;policy&quot;:{&quot;eviction&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:0},&quot;expiration&quot;:{&quot;defaultTTL&quot;:10,&quot;isExpirable&quot;:true,&quot;type&quot;:1},&quot;serverNotification&quot;:{&quot;isEnabled&quot;:false}},&quot;secondaries&quot;:0}]}" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Caching.DiagnosticLevel" value="1" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Caching.CacheSizePercentage" value="20" />

Can anyone spot why it is not working? Is it perhaps the identifier set in dataCacheClients?

Answer 1

I fixed the issue. The following needs to be included in the web.config:

<sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="AFCacheSessionStateProvider">
  <providers>
    <add name="AFCacheSessionStateProvider" type="Microsoft.Web.DistributedCache.DistributedCacheSessionStateStoreProvider, Microsoft.Web.DistributedCache" cacheName="default" dataCacheClientName="default" applicationName="AFCacheSessionState"/>
  </providers>
</sessionState>

This stores ASP.NET Session State in the cache.