MEMBASE ARCHITECTURE

Membase supports the Memcached protocol and so client applications that use Memcached can easily include Membase in their application stack. Behind the scenes, though, Membase adds capabilities like persistence and replication that Memcached does not support.

Each Membase node runs an instance of the ns_server, which is sort of a node supervisor and manages the activities on the node. Clients interact with the ns_server using the Memcached protocol or a REST interface. The REST interface is supported with the help of a component called Menelaus. Menelaus includes a robust jQuery layer that maps REST calls down to the server. Clients accessing Membase using the Memcached protocol reach the underlying data through a proxy called Moxi. Moxi acts as an intermediary that with the help of vBuckets always routes clients to the appropriate place. To understand how vBuckets route information correctly, you need to dig a bit deeper into the consistent hashing used by vBuckets.