I downloaded Windows AppFabric Beta 1 version this week.  You can find this download here. It took a few hours to install it.  I could surely tell I was dealing with beta 1 of version 1 of the product.  I finally installed it using new cluster option and XML configuration option.  I tried SQL Server configuration  option a few times, but it never installed without errors.  I think at the end I ran the install about a dozen times before it succeeded.

Anyway, three hours later or so I was done.  Next I tried to run a downloaded sample.   No matter what I tried, I could not get the sample to work.  It looked pretty obvious that I still need to configure something.  Finally after another 30 minutes I found an answer – I had to start the cache cluster.  To do so, I went to Programs –> Microsoft Distributed Cache –> Administration tool.  I was sort of surprised that this launched PowerShell window.  I guess we need to wait until release to get real nice configuration software with GUI.  In the mean time, I had to type “start-cachecluster”.  Once I ran that and saw that the server was started, I went back to run the samples.  They worked perfectly well this time.

Once I write my own sample, I will post source code on this blog.