What if I stop the Distributed Cache Service?

Question

What will happen if I stop the Distributed Cache Service from Central Administration on my SP2013 server ?

Will I really get better performance ? Improve navigation speed ? As I'm talking about production environment, I would like to know every side effects before doing it. I couldn't find it on google.

By the way, enabling BLOB cache is a good idea ? does it take much disk space ? and does it really improve performances ? I mean : is that worth it ? (Remind still talking about production env.)

I tried on my test lab, I didn't get any improvements, but I only have 1 site with 1 library.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I wouldn't stop it, many functionalities depend on it.

"The Distributed Cache service is either required by or improves performance of the following features:

• Authentication
• Newsfeeds
• OneNote client access
• Security Trimming
• Page performance" (source)

For blob cache, I'd definitely enable it. Not only does it take strain off the SQL server, but it also modifies the HTTP headers so that browsers don't need to even come to server to verify if specific files (images/javascripts, and others in blobcache) have been renewed. Please review this for details how you can even see it happen in Fiddler. Article discusses it from anonymous user perspective, so you might just want to skip the rest of the article where that is discussed.