Performance differences for more advanced back end caches (redis, memcache, apcu) against file cache for a single server?

[Marcus]

For a single server, on which runs everything (PHP, MariaDB, nginx, elastisearch), how much faster are the more advanced back end caches in comparison to file cache?

The file cache is already in RAM (assumed the server has enough of it). So in this case, most likely redis or memcache are slower? This is all for a one-server-setup. Maybe apcu is faster, but I had huge stability issues a few years ago.

I use simple file cache now and I wonder what is your setup and did you measure the performance differences.

 

[Xon]

Speed isn't so much the issue, but easy of maintenance and operation.

The problem with file cache is expiry of entries, which requires something to grovel through the file system. Redis or memcache do this "for free", and are vastly easier to flush when something goes wrong.

No way I can recommend apcu due to how poorly it scales and it's fundamental design flaws.

 

[Andy.N]

I have memcache running on my dedicated server 32GB ram on XF 1.5x for years and moving to XF 2.0 soon.
Would you say replace memcache with redis would be a step up?

 

[Xon]

If it is working, you might as well keep using memcache. The only difference is if you want to use something like my User Activity add-on which depends on raw redis commands or falls back to using the database.