The interface between clients and your Couchbase Cluster will largely depend on the client environment you are using. For the majority of client interfaces, a “smart” client is available that can talk natively to the Couchbase Cluster. This provides the client with a number of advantages in terms of the interface and sharing of information between the cluster and the client, and results in better overall performance and availability in failover situations.

Although you can continue to use memcached compatible clients, there are significant performance disadvantages to this deployment model, as it requires the use of a proxy that handles the mapping and distribution of information to the correct vBucket and node.

If you want to continue to use the memcached you should use the client-side Moxi deployment solution, as outlined in Section 4.7.3, “Client-Side (standalone) Proxy”.