Dometrain - Deep Dive Caching in .NET

Caching is often treated as a simple performance optimization, but at scale, it introduces complex challenges around data consistency, serialization, and distributed architecture. This course is a deep dive into building robust caching systems in .NET. You will start by exploring fundamental eviction policies like LRU, LFU, and predictive models before moving into distributed caching with Redis and the RESP protocol. We will examine the built-in IDistributedCache, its implementations, and why it often falls short as a true distributed cache. From there, you will learn how to build hybrid distributed caches, managing the intricate dance between L1 and L2 cache levels. Because multiple cache layers introduce coherence problems, we dedicate an entire module to cache synchronization, covering coherence protocols, tiered expirations, and distributed notifications to ensure your data remains consistent across your infrastructure.
Once the foundation is set, we tackle the hardest problems in distributed state. You will learn how to prevent the thundering herd problem and mitigate distributed cache stampedes using jittering and distributed locks. We cover advanced cache key management, including composition, hashing, and normalization, alongside strategies for handling cache internals and serialization evolution without downtime. The course also explores mass invalidations for denormalized data using explicit references, regions, and tagging in modern libraries like FusionCache and HybridCache. Finally, we bridge the gap to production readiness by exploring distributed resiliency, chaos engineering, and observability with OTEL and Aspire. We round out the curriculum with native web caching mechanisms-comparing Response Caching and Output Caching-and a comprehensive look at cache security to defend your systems against cache penetration, poisoning, and deception.
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