I read the following article recenlty: "Use Powershell to script changes to Sharepoint Web.Config file" http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/09/14/use-powershell-to-script-changes-to-the-sharepoint-web-config-file.aspx The article discusses configuring the Web.config file to support Blog Caching for Web Applications. How is this different from setting up RBS which involves: enabling and provisioning the RBS data store ( SQL Filestream provider ) provisioning a blob storeinstalling RBS on all front end serversusing powershell to enable it on a content database. Can and\or should both be used together? What are the advantages of one vs. the other? Joe

The BLOB cache is IIS's way of storing frequently accessed files locally so it does not have to keep reaching out to the database to let them load quicker in the browser. Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) is a way to store large files outside of the content database in a way that is seamless to SharePoint (i.e. SharePoint doesn't really know the data isn't actually in the database). This is useful to reduce the access and storage size on what is usually expensive primary storage disks. With RBS you redirect the files to potentially cheaper disk and minimize the IOPS on your expensive disks. As you can see the IIS BLOB Cache and RBS are different things, so you wouldn't necessarily compare them. The BLOB Cache is usually recommended if performance is important for your site, and RBS is recommended if you have lots of large files and don't want to store the data on your primary database disks, either for performance, cost, or operations reasons. Note that the recommended databases size includes data stored using RBS. You can use both together, you just need to be careful though because using RBS implies you have lots of large files and you probably don't want these being stored in a cache on your WFE servers. When configuring the BLOB Cache make sure you pay attention to the maximum size and make sure it's set to a value that works for you. Jason Warren Infrastructure Specialist Habanero Consulting Group habaneroconsulting.com/blog

Hi, I agree with Jason. If anything is unclear, please let us know. Thanks, Rock Wang Forum Support Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnmff@microsoft.com.Rock Wang TechNet Community Support

Jason, Thanks for the detailed explanation.. Joe

Thank you, thank you, thank you... I recently took over a SharePoint 2010 enviroment and I have experience using RBS. I was asked by the client to enable RBS, when I seen the Blob Cache folder I was confused. Thank you for clearing this up. Just an FYI: When you setup RBS for Sharepoint BLOB Cache is automatially created and used.