title: How to use Elasticache with Django's MemcachedCache Backend
body: <p>What's the correct way to use Amazon's Elasticache service (with the Memcached engine) with Django's MemcachedCache backend?</p>
  
  <p>I have a local Memcached service running locally, which works fine with the Django setting:</p>
  
  <pre><code>CACHES = {
      'default': {
          'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.memcached.MemcachedCache',
          'LOCATION': '127.0.0.1:11211',
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I thought using Elasticache would be as simple as creating the Memcached cluster instance and then changing my setting to:</p>
  
  <pre><code>CACHES = {
      'default': {
          'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.memcached.MemcachedCache',
          'LOCATION': 'instance-name.abcdef.cfg.use1.cache.amazonaws.com:11211',
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, when I test this locally, the cache silently fails and doesn't successfully store anything.</p>
  
  <p>What am I doing wrong? How do I get the MemcachedCache backend to show a real error message? Do I need to use a Elasticache-specific Django backend like <a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-elasticache" rel="nofollow">this</a>?</p>