AEM Dispatcher: resolving missing content by flushing cache
If content updates you publish in AEM do not appear on some or all of your live sites, one or more dispatcher servers likely have a stale cache. Flush the cache across each affected server to force it to retrieve the latest content from the AEM publish instance.
Description description
When you run AEM Dispatcher across multiple servers, content updates made in AEM can fail to appear on some or all live sites. This typically happens when the cache on one or more dispatcher servers is stale, which prevents the latest content from reaching end users.
Environment
- Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) with Dispatcher (all supported versions)
- Multiple dispatcher servers, either self-managed (on-premise or AMS) or AEM as a Cloud Service
Symptoms
- Content updates are published in AEM but do not appear on some live sites.
- The issue occurs inconsistently across different site paths.
- Flushing the dispatcher cache resolves the issue, and the updated content becomes visible.
Cause
A stale cache on one or more dispatcher servers prevents updated content from being served. Flushing the cache forces the dispatcher to retrieve fresh content from the AEM publish instance.
Resolution resolution
Follow these steps to resolve the issue.
- Identify all dispatcher servers that serve the affected site paths. Check your load balancer configuration or server inventory to confirm you have included every relevant dispatcher.
- If you manage the dispatcher servers yourself (on-premise or AMS), flush the cache for the affected content paths on each server. Caution: This command permanently deletes files from the dispatcher cache directory. Confirm the path before you run it, since you can’t recover deleted cache files — the dispatcher simply re-caches them on the next request.
find /mnt/var/www/html/content/<site>/<locale>/<path> -type f -exec rm -f {} \;
Replace<site>,<locale>, and<path>with the values that match your site structure. - If you use AEM as a Cloud Service, you don’t have file-system access to the dispatcher. Instead, send an HTTP invalidation request to
/dispatcher/invalidate.cache, use the ACS Commons Dispatcher Flush UI, or deploy a Cloud Manager configuration change to restart the pods and clear the cache. See Related reading for details. - Confirm each flush command completes successfully (exit status
0) with no errors reported. - Confirm that the previously missing or outdated content is now visible on the live sites.
- If the issue persists, review the dispatcher and AEM publish logs for cache-invalidation errors or misconfiguration.