Just to answer this from the POV of using Coherence (http://coherence.oracle.com/):
1. The application server needs a way to remove items from the cache and put items in the cache with an expiration date.
// remove one item from cache
cache.remove(key);
// remove multiple items from cache
cache.keySet().removeAll(keylist);
2. The webserver needs a way to pull items out of the cache in a very light-weight, fast manner without requiring thread allocation on the application server.
// access one item from cache
Object value = cache.get(key);
// access multiple items from cache
Map mapKV = cache.getAll(keylist);
3. It does not neccessarily need to be a distributed cache (accessible from multiple machines), but it wouldn't hurt.
- Elastic. Just add nodes. Auto-discovery. Auto-load-balancing. No data loss. No interruption. Every time you add a node, you get more data capacity and more throughput.
- Automatic high availability (HA). Kill a process, no data loss. Kill a server, no data loss.
A memory cache like memcached or Varnish (don't know much about Varnish). My only concern with memcached is that I'm going to want to cache 3 - 10 gigabytes of data at any given time, which is more than I can safely allocate in memory. Does memcached have a method to spill to the filesystem?
- Use both RAM and flash. Transparently. Easily handle 10s or even 100s of gigabytes per Coherence node (e.g. up to a TB or more per physical server).
For the sake of full disclosure, I work at Oracle. The opinions and views expressed in this post are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of my employer.