A multi-tenant, elastically scalable cache as a service is disclosed. Embodiments of the cache service eliminate the need for applications to manage their own cache tier. The multi-tenant cache service is implemented by maintaining/creating multiple named caches in a cache cluster and mapping each tenant's cache to a named cache in the cluster. Strict quotas are enforced on cache sizes This allows caches with different replication attributes to co-exist on the same cache server, allows migration of a cache from one cluster to another for load balancing purposes, and allows a cache to inflate/deflate to meet business needs. A network load balancer is used to route cache items to servers.