What's the difference from the Cache Server.

The Cache Server supports Asset Pipeline v1 only. The Accelerator supports Asset Pipeline V2 (available in 2019.3). They’ll coexist for the foreseeable future. You can actually use the Accelerator wizard to install the legacy cache server.

 

Great questions - I've created some initial Q&A for the FAQ on the welcome thread, which will be updated soon. In the meantime, I thought two of them might also be useful to post on this thread. I'm hoping that this helps clarify, but if not let me know and I can adjust.

What is the difference between the Unity Accelerator and the Cache Server?
The most important difference is that the original cache server only supports Asset Pipeline v1. The Unity Accelerator adds caching support for both Asset Pipeline v2 (coming soon) and source code via the Collaborate service (available now).

Another great benefit of the Unity Accelerator is that when using it with Asset Pipeline v2 and/or Collaborate service, it features automatic disk storage management. This means that it will periodically clean up unneeded assets and/or source. With the original Cache Server, teams often had to use additional tooling to manage disk space.

A third difference is that the Unity Accelerator also exposes metrics that provide you with useful information such as bytes transferred, editors connected and more. They are hosted as Prometheus metric values as /metrics, which you can query from the local network.

I noticed that you can install the Legacy Cache Server in the Unity Accelerator installation wizard. Does this mean it has new functionality?
We have not added any new functionality to the legacy cache server. The decision was made to include it in the Unity Accelerator installation wizard so that teams only needed to go to a single place to manage installations.

 

Here's what I've learned/gathered (apologies for the delay), @fherbst :

1. Which version of Cache Server is used in the Accelerator Installer?
   • The installer uses npm to get the latest published version of the V1 Cache Server at the time of installation.
   • The thread you linked to doesn't seem to indicate any recommendation regarding a correlation between the version of Cache Server and the version of the Editors.
     • What Stephen mentions is that we recommend using a different V1 Cache Server for each Project (to avoid collisions). The download links from the Unity download archive are all directed to the Unity Cache Server Github repository to ensure folks are using the latest published version which includes important bug fixes.
     • When using the new Asset Import Pipeline (V2), the Accelerator can handle caching for many projects supported by one Accelerator.
2. Does each Unity Accelerator instance only support a specific Unity version?
   • No, the Accelerator will remain backward compatible, supporting all versions of the V2 Asset Import Pipeline starting in 2019.3 and later. It will automatically upgrade itself as needed to make this seamless. As mentioned in #1 above, it can simultaneously support multiple projects.
3. Have the shortcomings of Cache Server & v1 be[en] resolved in Accelerator & v2?
   • Yes, the new Asset Import Pipeline and the Accelerator have been designed and built with older problems in mind to avoid known issues we've encountered in the past. For example, the new Asset Import Pipeline is much more deterministic and tracks dependencies to understand when a dependent asset must be reimported. There are many other improvements that will be detailed in future documentation for the new pipeline. I'll update this thread when they are publicly available.
   • The Accelerator performs just as well on Windows as Mac OS X or Linux, provided the minimum operating system versions (https://docs.unity3d.com/2019.3/Documentation/Manual/UnityAccelerator.html).
4. Does Unity Accelerator have options?
   • Yes, the Accelerator has options, but we've elected to wait on providing full documentation around their use during the early stage of beta as they can make it harder for us to help troubleshoot if any unforeseen issues arise with the default setup and are subject to change.
   • Some of the more interesting options that we have are the ability to enable more debugging logs and to explicitly choose ports to listen on. I'll update this thread when we publish details on all the various options in the unity-accelerator.cfg file found in the storage directory chosen during installation. But if there's anything you'd like to try, let me know and I'd be happy to walk you through what it does and how to tweak it. Also, during this Beta testing, we'd love to hear about things missing that you need or would like to have control over.

 

@joshcamas, that is correct. Collaborate is not a requirement for using the Accelerator. And note, we've announced support for the new V2 Asset Import Pipeline along with the Unity Editor beta 6 release: https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-accelerator-for-asset-import-pipeline-v2-out-now.756698/

 

No, @dzamani, the new command line argument for using the Accelerator is -cacheServerEndpoint. So, for example, if you were to start a brand new project that does not have the new Asset Import Pipeline enabled nor any pre-configured settings in the preferences for a Cache Server, you can do something like the following:

-adb2 -enableCacheServer -cacheServerEndpoint 127.0.0.1:10080​

 

Yes, there is an -adb1 option, as well. We'll be updating our documentation to help make this more clear, too (should be updated here before the 2019.3 is released from the beta process).

 

@RG_Keith, you are correct, we missed the deadline. Our documentation team is working hard on getting the changes updated. For now, I've placed the relevant updated sections in this response: https://forum.unity.com/threads/usage-in-batchmode.819543/#post-5429790

 

Regarding @fherbst's question above...

This week's release has a new tool to help you understand all the configuration options available to the Accelerator by running unity-accelerator tool config-help.

 

@svorobyov, the new v2 pipeline uses its own database (stored in the Library folder) so there is no need for running a separate local cache server. Currently, there are no options to choose the location of this local database.

In all of our testing v2 outperforms v1. If you find a situation where that is not the case and are willing to share the details of your project's setup, we'd love to learn more about it.

 

@Lars-Steenhoff , the Accelerator is a storage facility that the Asset Import Pipeline can optionally utilize to skip importing of new or changed assets if another member on your team has already processed them. It does not make local development any faster. The Asset Database already handles local caching for you so adding an Accelerator would be superfluous and will double the amount of storage as you've suggested.

 

@Lars-Steenhoff, that's not something the Accelerator can assist with today, though it is something the import team is considering. I don't know off-hand how other teams handle this type of optimization, but might be worth a post in a more appropriate channel, perhaps either Editor & General Support or Build Pipeline & Runtime Asset Management.