Set Blob cache to false

Question

what is the use of blob cache? Is it supported to set the blob cache to true or false

• what's the effect of set it to true
• what's the effect of set it to false

Answer 1

What is the use of blob cache?

The BLOB cache is Disk-based Caching for Binary Large Objects. it stores copies of binary large object files that are used by web pages, such as images and CSS files on the file system of WFE servers.

This enables SharePoint to serve these files more quickly because the WFE server no longer needs to retrieve the file from the database.

Is it supported to set the blob cache to true or false

Yes, I didn't find any frank article says it's not supported. but in some cases, it's not recommended to be enabled! so it's disabled by default!

Note:

it's highly recommended to disable the blob cache during the dev and design phase!

What's the effect of setting it to true

Enabling the blob cache will improve the performance of your sites and reduce the load on your database servers because at the first time that a web page is called, these files are copied from the database to the cache on the server hard disk drive, and all subsequent requests for those files are then served from the hard disk drive cache of the server

Note: after setting the blob cache to true, you should perform

• IIS Reset.
• Open the site settings instead of the homepage.

Note:

• The BLOB cache will increase disk I/O on your WFE servers. meanwhile, it will decrease the load on the database and network!

What's the effect of setting it to false

The Binary Large Objects files will not be cached!

For more details check

• Blob Cache in SharePoint
• Introduction to BLOB Caching in SharePoint
• Cache settings operations in SharePoint Server

Answer 2

The disk-based BLOB cache controls the caching for binary large objects (BLOBs), such as frequently used image, audio, and video files, and other files that are used to display web pages, such as .css and .js files.

The BLOB cache is enabled on a front-end web server and improves performance by retrieving BLOB files from the database and storing them in a directory on the front-end web end server where they are served to users. This reduces the network traffic to and load on the database server.

You can read more information about the blob cache, here.

To configure cache settings, check this link.