Installing memcached on windows

Last Updated :
07 Jun, 2024

Memcached is a powerful tool used to speed up dynamic web applications by caching data in memory. While commonly used on Unix-like systems, such as Linux, installing Memcached on Windows may seem difficult. However, setting it up on your Windows machine is straightforward with the right guidance. This guide will walk you through each step in simple language, making it easy for anyone to follow and install Memcached on Windows.

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Steps to install Memcached on Windows

Step 1: Downloading Memcached

Download the Memcached binary for Windows from a trusted source. Ensure you choose the version compatible with your Windows architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).

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Step 2: Extract the Contents

Once the download is complete, extract the contents of the zip file to a folder on your computer using built-in Windows tools or a third-party software like 7-Zip.

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Step 3: Accessing the Command Prompt

Navigate to the extracted folder using the Command Prompt. To do this, open the Start menu, type «cmd» into the search bar, and press Enter. This will launch the Command Prompt.

Step 4: Installing Memcached

In the Command Prompt, navigate to the directory where you extracted the Memcached files using the cd command.

For example:

cd C:\path\to\extracted\memcached

Once you’re in the Memcached directory, execute the following command to initiate the installation process:

memcached.exe -d install

This command installs Memcached as a Windows service, allowing it to run in the background.

Step 5: Starting Memcached

After installing Memcached as a service, you can start it using the following command:

net start memcached

This command initiates the Memcached service, enabling it to cache data and enhance the performance of your web applications.

Step 6: Verifying the Installation

To ensure that Memcached has been successfully installed and is running correctly, you can check the Windows Services interface. Press Win + R, type «services.msc» into the Run dialog, and press Enter. Look for the «memcached» service in the list, and verify that its status is set to «Running.»

Conclusion

So You’ve successfully installed Memcached on your Windows machine. By caching data in memory, Memcached can significantly improve the performance of your web applications. Experiment with different configurations to optimize caching performance according to your application’s needs.

Memcached is a high performance, in-memory key-value store or caching system. Its main purpose is to speed up web applications by caching database queries, contents, or other computed results.

Memcached is originally a linux application, but since it is open-source, it has been compiled for windows. There are two major sources for the pre-built windows binary: Jellycan and Northscale, and both versions can be used. The following are the download links for the memcached windows binaries:

• http://code.jellycan.com/files/memcached-1.2.5-win32-bin.zip
• http://code.jellycan.com/files/memcached-1.2.6-win32-bin.zip
• http://downloads.northscale.com/memcached-win32-1.4.4-14.zip
• http://downloads.northscale.com/memcached-win64-1.4.4-14.zip
• http://downloads.northscale.com/memcached-1.4.5-x86.zip
• http://downloads.northscale.com/memcached-1.4.5-amd64.zip

In versions earlier than 1.4.5, memcached can install itself as a service. However, the ability to run memcached as a service is removed since version 1.4.5. Therefore, the installation steps are divided into two categories, part A for memcached prior to version 1.4.5. and part B for memcached version 1.4.5 and later.

A) Installation of memcached < 1.4.5:

1. Extract the memcached windows binary to any directory.

2. In versions earlier than 1.4.5, memcached can install itself as a service. Run a command prompt with elevated privileges, and type:

   c:\memcached\memcached.exe -d install
   

   • Replace c:\memcached\memcached.exe with the actual path of your installation.

3. Then, start or stop the memcached service with the following command:

   c:\memcached\memcached.exe -d start
   c:\memcached\memcached.exe -d stop
   

4. To change the configuration of memcached, run regedit.exe and navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\memcached. Suppose you wish to increase the memory limit of memcached, edit the value of ImagePath to the following:

   "c:\memcached\memcached.exe" -d runservice -m 512
   

   • Besides -m 512, you may also append other memcached parameters to the path. Run c:\memcached\memcached.exe -h to view the list of available parameters.

5. Meanwhile, to uninstall the memcached serivce, run the following command:

   c:\memcached\memcached.exe -d uninstall
   

B) Installation of memcached >= 1.4.5:

1. Extract the memcached windows binary to any directory.

2. In version 1.4.5 or later, memcached cannot run as a service. It must be started as a normal process using the task scheduler. To configure the memcached process to run automatically every time windows start, run a command prompt with elevated privileges, and type the following:

   schtasks /create /sc onstart /tn memcached /tr "'c:\memcached\memcached.exe' -m 512"
   

   • Replace c:\memcached\memcached.exe with the actual path of your installation.
   • Besides -m 512, you may also append other memcached parameters to the path. Run c:\memcached\memcached.exe -h to view the list of available parameters.

3. Meanwhile, to remove the scheduled memcached task, run the following command:

   schtasks /delete /tn memcached
   

Integrating with PHP

To interface with memcached in PHP, you need to install the memcache extension for PHP:

1. Check that your PHP extension folder has the file php_memcache.dll. If not, download the file from https://pecl.php.net/package/memcache (select the windows dll file), and place it in the PHP extension folder.

2. Add the following line in php.ini to enable the memcache extension: extension=php_memcache.dll

3. Create this simple php script file to test that it works.

   <?php
   
   $memcache = new Memcache;
   $memcache->connect('localhost', 11211) or die ("Could not connect");
   
   $version = $memcache->getVersion();
   echo "Server's version: ".$version."<br/>\n";
   
   $tmp_object = new stdClass;
   $tmp_object->str_attr = 'test';
   $tmp_object->int_attr = 123;
   
   $memcache->set('key', $tmp_object, false, 10) or die ("Failed to save data at the server");
   echo "Store data in the cache (data will expire in 10 seconds)<br/>\n";
   
   $get_result = $memcache->get('key');
   echo "Data from the cache:<br/>\n";
   
   var_dump($get_result);
   
   ?>
   

Integrating with Python

To interface with memcached in Python, you need to install the memcached client for Python.

1. Execute one of the following command to install the memcached client. The first is for Python 2.x while the second is for Python 3.x.

   pip install python-memcached
   pip install python3-memcached
   

2. Create this simple python script to test that it works.

   import memcache
   mc = memcache.Client(['127.0.0.1:11211'], debug=0)
   mc.set("some_key", "Some value")
   value = mc.get("some_key")
   mc.set("another_key", 3)
   mc.delete("another_key")
   mc.set("key", "1")   # note that the key used for incr/decr must be a string.
   mc.incr("key")
   mc.decr("key")
   

Memcached statistics

To view the statistics for memcached, bring up a telnet connection to memcached by the command:

telnet 127.0.0.1 11211

Then, type stats and enter.

Here is an explanation of the different memcached stats.

Source: https://github.com/memcached/memcached/blob/master/doc/protocol.txt

This article will teach you how to install and set up Memcached in both a Windows and Linux environment.

If you’ve already completed the installation process, you can also learn how to access and manage data in Memcached with PHP.

What is Memcached?

Memcached is a free, open-source memory caching system, often used for enhancing the speed of dynamic database-driven websites.

The cached data gets stored in a short-term, dynamic memory location that can be easily accessed within your applications by a key name.

Install Memcached on Windows

Memcached installation in a Windows environment is pretty straightforward.  There are just a few steps to follow.

There are two locations that you need to download from. The executable and supporting files GitHub repository, and the PHP extension from PHP’s official website.

First, we’ll start with the executable file and supporting files. You can download them from GitHub. They keep the repository updated regularly with the latest versions.

Make sure to download the correct files that your system will support, x64 vs. x86, etc., and place them in a directory on your local drive. My files are located on the C: drive at:

C:\memcached

Now, we need to head on over to the PHP PECL Downloads Page where you’ll see a long list of extension releases for PHP.

This list only contains a handful of Memcached Windows download links. The latest Windows download, at the time of this article, allows support for PHP versions 7.2 through 7.4. Download the file that fits your PHP environment description, x64 or x86, or thread-safe vs. non-thread-safe.

Move the newly downloaded DLL file to the location of your PHP installation and into the ext folder. Mine is located here:

C:\php\ext

In my case, I’ve downloaded the installation file for PHP 7.4, so my php.ini configuration will look like this:

[Memcache]
extension=php-7.4.x_memcache.dll
memcache.allow_failover = 0
memcache.chunk_size = 32768
memcache.default_port = 11211
memcache.hash_strategy = standard 
memcache.hash_function = crc32
memcache.protocol = ascii
memcache.compress_threshold = 20000
memcache.lock_timeout = 1

Make sure you’ve used the correct file name when updating your php.ini file. Yours could be different than what’s shown in this example and adding an incorrect file name will cause issues with the installation.

After you’ve downloaded and moved the DLL file to the correct location and updated your php.ini file, restart PHP by opening the Services app, or services.msc, and restarting the World Wide Web Publishing Service service.

[Ctrl+R]
services.msc

The final step is starting Memcached in your Windows environment by running the following command:

C:\memcached\memcached.exe -d start

Make sure you’re in the directory where the memcached.exe file is located before starting it, otherwise you’ll get an error. Alternatively, you could set up the path in your system’s environment variables to point to the correct directory so you can start it from anywhere in the command-line tool.

Install Memcached on Linux

There are two options for the first step of an installation in a Linux environment.  You can either download the file directly from the downloads page or you can run the wget command below, which will grab and download the latest version automatically to your current active directory:

wget http://memcached.org/latest

Next, you’ll need to unzip the downloaded tar.gz file:

tar -zxvf memcached-1.x.x.tar.gz

You’ll need to replace «1.x.x» with the version number that was downloaded. At the time of this writing, the latest version was 1.6.9, so the command would be tar -zxvf memcached-1.6.9.tar.gz

Now that the file contents are extracted, move over to the newly created directory, again using the correct version number in place of «1.x.x»:

cd memcached-1.x.x

Finally, complete the installation from the new directory:

./configure && make && make test && sudo make install

That’s pretty much it. With my Linux/Apache environment, I had to restart Apache for the new installation to take effect within my PHP applications, but all you need to do is run this command to restart Apache:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Conclusion

Memcached is a great solution for memory caching, in either a Windows or Linux environment.  Especially when querying heavy loads of data, or data that typically doesn’t change often.

Now that everything is setup in your environment, head on over to the next article to leverage the power of Memcached with PHP.

Written by: J. Rowe, Web Developer

Last Updated: April 19, 2022
Created: December 16, 2020

Answer

Memcached is primarily developed for Unix-like operating systems, but it also has support for Windows. In this guide, we will discuss the steps required to install and run Memcached on a Windows machine.

Prerequisites

• A Windows machine with administrative privileges.
• Visual Studio C++ Build Tools (2015 or later) installed on your system. You can download it from here.
• Memcached binary distribution package for Windows. You can download it from here.

Steps

1. Extract the downloaded memcached-win32-*.zip file to any directory on your system.
2. Open the command prompt as an administrator and navigate to the directory where you extracted the files in step 1.
3. Run the following command to install Memcached as a Windows service:
   «`
   memcached.exe -d install
   «`
4. Once installed, start the Memcached service using the following command:
   «`
   net start memcached
   «`
5. Memcached should now be running on your Windows machine. You can verify this by running the following command:
   «`
   telnet localhost 11211
   «`
   If the installation was successful, you should see output similar to the following:
   «`
   Trying 127.0.0.1…
   Connected to localhost.
   Escape character is ‘^]’.
   «`

That’s it! Memcached is now successfully installed and running on your Windows machine. You can now use it in your applications to improve performance by caching frequently accessed data.

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Database · November 8, 2024