MemoryCache does not obey memory limits in configuration

Wow, so I just spent entirely too much time digging around in the CLR with reflector, but I think I finally have a good handle on what’s going on here.

The settings are being read in correctly, but there seems to be a deep-seated problem in the CLR itself that looks like it will render the memory limit setting essentially useless.

The following code is reflected out of the System.Runtime.Caching DLL, for the CacheMemoryMonitor class (there is a similar class that monitors physical memory and deals with the other setting, but this is the more important one):

protected override int GetCurrentPressure()
{
  int num = GC.CollectionCount(2);
  SRef ref2 = this._sizedRef;
  if ((num != this._gen2Count) && (ref2 != null))
  {
    this._gen2Count = num;
    this._idx ^= 1;
    this._cacheSizeSampleTimes[this._idx] = DateTime.UtcNow;
    this._cacheSizeSamples[this._idx] = ref2.ApproximateSize;
    IMemoryCacheManager manager = s_memoryCacheManager;
    if (manager != null)
    {
      manager.UpdateCacheSize(this._cacheSizeSamples[this._idx], this._memoryCache);
    }
  }
  if (this._memoryLimit <= 0L)
  {
    return 0;
  }
  long num2 = this._cacheSizeSamples[this._idx];
  if (num2 > this._memoryLimit)
  {
    num2 = this._memoryLimit;
  }
  return (int) ((num2 * 100L) / this._memoryLimit);
}

The first thing you might notice is that it doesn’t even try to look at the size of the cache until after a Gen2 garbage collection, instead just falling back on the existing stored size value in cacheSizeSamples. So you won’t ever be able to hit the target right on, but if the rest worked we would at least get a size measurement before we got in real trouble.

So assuming a Gen2 GC has occurred, we run into problem 2, which is that ref2.ApproximateSize does a horrible job of actually approximating the size of the cache. Slogging through CLR junk I found that this is a System.SizedReference, and this is what it’s doing to get the value (IntPtr is a handle to the MemoryCache object itself):

[SecurityCritical]
[MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.InternalCall)]
private static extern long GetApproximateSizeOfSizedRef(IntPtr h);

I’m assuming that extern declaration means that it goes diving into unmanaged windows land at this point, and I have no idea how to start finding out what it does there. From what I’ve observed though it does a horrible job of trying to approximate the size of the overall thing.

The third noticeable thing there is the call to manager.UpdateCacheSize which sounds like it should do something. Unfortunately in any normal sample of how this should work s_memoryCacheManager will always be null. The field is set from the public static member ObjectCache.Host. This is exposed for the user to mess with if he so chooses, and I was actually able to make this thing sort of work like it’s supposed to by slopping together my own IMemoryCacheManager implementation, setting it to ObjectCache.Host, and then running the sample. At that point though, it seems like you might as well just make your own cache implementation and not even bother with all this stuff, especially since I have no idea if setting your own class to ObjectCache.Host (static, so it affects every one of these that might be out there in process) to measure the cache could mess up other things.

I have to believe that at least part of this (if not a couple parts) is just a straight up bug. It’d be nice to hear from someone at MS what the deal was with this thing.

TLDR version of this giant answer: Assume that CacheMemoryLimitMegabytes is completely busted at this point in time. You can set it to 10 MB, and then proceed to fill up the cache to ~2GB and blow an out of memory exception with no tripping of item removal.