Sharepoint 2013 Event ID 6398 AppFabric Distributed Cache Error

A few days ago, I started seeing repeated errors with Event ID 6398 and description of:

The Execute method of job definition 
Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.LMTRepopulationJob 
(ID 581fc80e-f7fb-4b3b-99cd-7affa208f57b) threw an exception. 
More information is included below. 
Unexpected exception in FeedCacheService.BulkLMTUpdate: 
Unable to create a DataCache. SPDistributedCache is probably down.

This error occurs every 5 minutes as the User Profile Service – Feed Cache Repopulation Job ran and it also prevented anything from populating the My Sites Newsfeeds section. The Newsfeeds page would only return “We’re still collection the latest news. You may see more if you try again a little later.” I tried to follow a multitude of blog posts, forum posts and TechNet articles on repairing the AppFabric Distributed Cache Service and was unable to correct the error.

My next step was to try to get the AppFabric service back to the initial setup. Remove the AppFabric setup from Add/Remove Programs. More information on this process in this MSDN article and also follow the link from there to Clean up any remaining AppFabric settings either manually or using the Cleanup Tool they provide.

After rebooting, I downloaded the AppFabric 1.1 Installer from here. However, do not install it manually, instead use the SharePoint 2013 setup disc to use the prerequisite installer to install and configure AppFabric using the following command:

prerequisiteinstaller.exe /appFabric:C:\pathto\WindowsServerAppFabricSetup_x64.exe

Now you can continue on with the initial configuration of the AppFabric service. I ran the following command from the SharePoint 2013 PowerShell as Administrator.

$instanceName ="SPDistributedCacheService Name=AppFabricCachingService"
$serviceInstance = Get-SPServiceInstance | ? {($_.service.tostring()) 
-eq $instanceName -and ($_.server.name) -eq $env:computername}
$serviceInstance.Provision()

Then run:

Add-SPDistributedCacheServiceInstance

You should see the Distributed Cache service running in Manage Services on Server in Central Administration and also see the AppFabric Caching Service running in Services. If you don’t, then try Remove-DistributedCacheServiceInstance and Add again. After completing this process, I was able to go back to MySites and see the Newsfeed as it should be and also no more errors in the Event Log.

I would love to know why this occurred since I was not working on anything with the Caching service prior to the errors; however, I hope this helps someone else caught up in this problem. Let me know if this helps or you have more information about this issue.

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