Amazon ElastiCache overview
The Amazon ElastiCache architecture is based on the concept of deploying one or more cache clusters for your application. After your cache cluster is up and running, the service automates common administrative tasks, such as resource provisioning, failure detection and recovery, and software patching. Amazon ElastiCache provides detailed monitoring metrics associated with your cache nodes, enabling you to diagnose and react to issues very quickly. For example, you can set up thresholds and receive alarms if one of your cache nodes is overloaded with requests.
ElastiCache works with both the Redis and Memcached engines. You can launch an ElastiCache cluster by following the steps in the appropriate User Guide:
It's important to understand that Amazon ElastiCache is not coupled to your database tier. As far as Amazon ElastiCache nodes are concerned, your application is just setting and getting keys in a slab of memory. That being the case, you can use Amazon ElastiCache with relational databases such as MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server; with NoSQL databases such as Amazon DynamoDB or MongoDB; or with no database tier at all, which is common for distributed computing applications. Amazon ElastiCache gives you the flexibility to deploy one, two, or more different cache clusters with your application, which you can use for differing types of datasets.
