What is the difference between a replicated cache and a distributed one?
DIST is a new cache mode in Infinispan, in addition to REPL and INVALIDATION. The key difference is that a replicated cache (REPL) is where the state of all caches in a cluster are identical. I.e., if a key exists on one instance, it will also exist on *all* other instances. In a distributed cache, however, a sufficient number of copies are maintained for redundancy and fault tolerance, but this is typically far fewer than the number of instances in the cluster, providing a far greater degree of scalability than a more simplistic replicated cache. This cache mode also is able to transparelty locate keys across a cluster, and even perform L1 caching for fast read access of state that should reside remotely. For detailed designs, refer tothis document.
