title: 2013 Azure recommended Session State for multiple instances
body: <p>I'm looking for the current (2013) recommendation for Session State management on Windows Azure. There is a number of articles I found on the web but they reference older mythologies. I thought I found the latest method in <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg278339.aspx">this Microsoft article</a> but when I went got to step 2 that says to setup Caching in Windows Azure Management Portal, it wasn't an option. I'm assume that there is a newer methodology that I just didn't see. </p>
  
  <p>Here are my requirements:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>All load balanced instances of the application can use a shared Session State. </li>
  <li>That session state is not affected if one of the web role instances fails.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Basically I'm looking for the equivalent to out-of-process storage providers such as Session State Service or SQL Session State option that are used in non-Azure ASP.NET deployments.</p>
  
  <p>One other concern I have to using the Cache is what are the scenarios when sessions are deleted? Normally I think of Cache as not guaranteed because of expiration and making room for newer cache items. I want to make sure sessions don't start to disappear because they are in Cache. </p>
  
  <p><strong>UPDATES:</strong></p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>I found <a href="http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/how-to-guides/cache/">this Microsoft article</a> and I'm going through the steps, it doesn't have a date last updated but seems to be recent. I'd still like to know if there is a better solution based on my requirements.</li>
  <li>I found this <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh914142.aspx">FAQ from Fall 2012</a> that answers the question about the preferred Caching options. </li>
  </ol>