Why your .NET 8 API needs a cache layer — and how to build it right with Redis/Valkey and tag invalidation (opens in new tab)

Caching is one of those things that sounds optional until your database starts getting hammered at scale, your response times creep up, and you realise you've been querying the same data hundreds of times per minute. This article covers why a cache layer matters, how to implement cache-aside properly with tag-based invalidation in .NET 8, how to handle Redis outages gracefully, and why Valkey is worth knowing about. Why bother with cache at all? The short answer: your database doesn't need to...