coredns/plugin/cache/README.md

# cache

## Name

*cache* - enables a frontend cache.

## Description

With *cache* enabled, all records except zone transfers and metadata records will be cached for up to
3600s. Caching is mostly useful in a scenario when fetching data from the backend (upstream,
database, etc.) is expensive.

This plugin can only be used once per Server Block.

## Syntax

~~~ txt
cache [TTL] [ZONES...]
~~~

* **TTL** max TTL in seconds. If not specified, the maximum TTL will be used, which is 3600 for
    noerror responses and 1800 for denial of existence ones.
    Setting a TTL of 300: `cache 300` would cache records up to 300 seconds.
* **ZONES** zones it should cache for. If empty, the zones from the configuration block are used.

Each element in the cache is cached according to its TTL (with **TTL** as the max).
For the negative cache, the SOA's MinTTL value is used. A TTL of zero is not allowed. 
A cache is divided into 256 shards, each holding up to 512 items by default - for a total size 
of 256 * 512 = 131,072 items.

If you want more control:

~~~ txt
cache [TTL] [ZONES...] {
    success CAPACITY [TTL]
    denial CAPACITY [TTL]
    prefetch AMOUNT [[DURATION] [PERCENTAGE%]]
}
~~~

* **TTL**  and **ZONES** as above.
* `success`, override the settings for caching successful responses. **CAPACITY** indicates the maximum
  number of packets we cache before we start evicting (*randomly*). **TTL** overrides the cache maximum TTL.
* `denial`, override the settings for caching denial of existence responses. **CAPACITY** indicates the maximum
  number of packets we cache before we start evicting (LRU). **TTL** overrides the cache maximum TTL.
  There is a third category (`error`) but those responses are never cached.
* `prefetch` will prefetch popular items when they are about to be expunged from the cache.
  Popular means **AMOUNT** queries have been seen with no gaps of **DURATION** or more between them.
  **DURATION** defaults to 1m. Prefetching will happen when the TTL drops below **PERCENTAGE**,
  which defaults to `10%`, or latest 1 second before TTL expiration. Values should be in the range `[10%, 90%]`.
  Note the percent sign is mandatory. **PERCENTAGE** is treated as an `int`.

## Capacity and Eviction

When specifying **CAPACITY**, the minimum cache capacity is 131,072.  Specifying a lower value will be
ignored. Specifying a **CAPACITY** of zero does not disable the cache.

Eviction is done per shard - i.e. when a shard reaches capacity, items are evicted from that shard.  Since shards don't fill up perfectly evenly, evictions will occur before the entire cache reaches full capacity. Each shard capacity is equal to the total cache size / number of shards (256).


## Metrics

If monitoring is enabled (via the *prometheus* directive) then the following metrics are exported:

* `coredns_cache_size{type}` - Total elements in the cache by cache type.
* `coredns_cache_capacity{type}` - Total capacity of the cache by cache type.
* `coredns_cache_hits_total{type}` - Counter of cache hits by cache type.
* `coredns_cache_misses_total{}` - Counter of cache misses.
* `coredns_cache_drops_total{}` - Counter of dropped messages.

Cache types are either "denial" or "success".

## Examples

Enable caching for all zones, but cap everything to a TTL of 10 seconds:

~~~ corefile
. {
    cache 10
    whoami
}
~~~

Proxy to Google Public DNS and only cache responses for example.org (or below).

~~~ corefile
. {
    proxy . 8.8.8.8:53
    cache example.org
}
~~~