Patent ID: 7996615

Claim:
A method comprising: creating a first cache region associated with an application, the first cache region being one of a plurality of cache regions associated with the application, each of the plurality of cache regions being associated with a different caching treatment policy, the application running on a plurality of virtual machines, a first one of the plurality of virtual machines having a local memory cache that is private to the first one of the plurality of virtual machines and a shared memory cache that is shared by the first one of the plurality of virtual machines and a second one of the plurality of virtual machines; associating the first cache region with a first storage policy, the first storage policy specifying that a first copy of an object to be stored in the first cache region is to be stored in the local memory cache and that a second copy of the object to be stored in the first cache region is to be stored in the shared memory cache; receiving a request from the application to retrieve the object, the object having been stored in the first cache region; detecting that a second version of the object is newer than a first version of the object, the second version of the object being stored in the shared memory cache and the first version of the object being stored in the local memory cache; and providing the second version of the object to the application, wherein the providing of the second version of the object comprises copying the second version of the object from the shared memory cache to the local memory cache.