Migration Roadmap

The caching APIs and ASP.NET providers supplied by ScaleOut StateServer and Windows Server AppFabric (WSAF) Caching share many similar concepts and features, so a migration can often be performed with minimal changes to your application. A typical migration process will involve the following steps:

  • Download and install the ScaleOut StateServer service on one or more host systems using ScaleOut’s lightweight MSI package. This installer can also be run on client machines to install the libraries needed by your application to connect to remote ScaleOut hosts.

    Figure 1. The ScaleOut Windows Installer

    images/Installer.png

  • Once installation is complete, the ScaleOut Management Console application will automatically start and prompt you to configure the SOSS service. At a minimum, configuration involves selecting a network address for the service to use and, optionally, entering a license key to enable various product features. If you are only installing client libraries on a system, the Console will ask you how applications on the system should connect to SOSS hosts.

    Figure 2. Initial Configuration

    images/ConsoleConfig.png

  • After using the SOSS Console to select a network address for the ScaleOut service to use, the service will automatically detect other ScaleOut hosts running on the subnet and will become part of the data grid’s membership with no further configuration needed. This guide’s Server Configuration and Deployment topic has an overview of ScaleOut’s peer-to-peer architecture.
  • It is recommended that you review this guide’s Overview of Key Architectural Differences section to learn more about the similarities and important differences that you will encounter when moving from Windows Server AppFabric to ScaleOut StateServer.
  • If you will be using ScaleOut to store an ASP.NET web application’s session state or output cache data, you will need to modify your web.config to swap out the WSAF providers with the ScaleOut providers. This guide’s sections on Using the ASP.NET Session State Provider and Using the ASP.NET Output Cache Provider provide instructions on how to configure the providers.
  • If you will be migrating a cache client application that was using AppFabric’s DataCache class, this guide’s Migrating a Cache Client section provides information about how to use equivalent features in ScaleOut’s NamedCache API.