# Memcache - any understand how this would work? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [April 2, 2007, 6:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcache-any-understand-how-this-would-work/90881 "2007-04-02T18:25:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nendee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@nendee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nendee)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 6:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcache-any-understand-how-this-would-work/90881/1 "2007-04-02T18:25:52Z")
Ok, our question is this. We have memcache running on each of our application servers. (Lets say 4). When one of those servers goes down (say server 1), the other 3 servers have no way to retrieve a needed cached item from server 1, so it goes to the DB - etc to construct what is needed. Now, can that item be recached on servers 2-4? When server 1 goes back up, can that cache be automatically cleaned out so that there isn’t any stale data now being served? ---
**Author:** ![nendee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@nendee](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nendee)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 8:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcache-any-understand-how-this-would-work/90881/2 "2007-04-02T20:27:07Z")
Afaik, this hapens automatically. The memcached design is such that servers are not aware of each other. The client maintains a list of servers which it queries in order for data. The servers themselves just store and discard data on a FIFO basis, and on expiry values. So, as soon as one server goes down, the others will pick up the slack, and as soon as it comes back up (I assume it’s a h/w failure) its cache will be flushed and it’ll restart from scratch. I’m not sure what’ll happen if there’s a network read error and I suspect stale data can be served. However, counter this by setting good expiry values for cached data. Vish