My SharePoint Server out of the blue started throwing event ID 6398. The error is :

• Unexpected exception in FeedCacheService.IsRepopulationNeeded: Unable to create a DataCache. SPDistributedCache is probably down..

I ran Get-CacheHost and it was listing an old SharePoint Server plus the new one. Trying to remove it resulted in the famous “CacheHostInfo is null” error.

The Service on SharePoint Central Admin also gave the same error “CacheHostInfo is null”.

I went and checked the DistributedCacheService.exe.config file and the information was listed. I also checked the registry key for AppFabric and it had no information, so I copied the information listed in the Config file and pasted it in the Registry.

I exported the config file, removed the old server and then imported the config again. After that I ran the following commands:

$SPFarm = Get-SPFarm
$cacheClusterName = “SPDistributedCacheCluster_” + $SPFarm.Id.ToString()
$cacheClusterManager = [Microsoft.SharePoint.DistributedCaching.Utilities.SPDistributedCacheClusterInfoManager]::Local
$cacheClusterInfo = $cacheClusterManager.GetSPDistributedCacheClusterInfo($cacheClusterName);
$instanceName =”SPDistributedCacheService Name=AppFabricCachingService”
$serviceInstance = Get-SPServiceInstance | ? {($_.Service.Tostring()) -eq $instanceName -and ($_.Server.Name) -eq “Server Name”}
$serviceInstance.Delete()
Add-SPDistributedCacheServiceInstance
$cacheClusterInfo.CacheHostsInfoCollection

This took a few minutes to run. When it was completed the AppFabric service started under services.msc and when I went to the Services under SharePoint Central Management it was also started.

Hope it helps

**Update**

It seems like this is a bug in SP1 for SharePoint. Randomly I get the same error and today I started having these errors logged every 5 min.

What I did was open up the SharePoint Management Shell as Administrator and then execute the following commands:

• Stop-CacheCluster
• Export-CacheClusterConfig
• Import-CacheClusterConfig
• Start-CacheCluster

This seems to work but for how long? The April CU for SharePojnt has not been released as yet. Hopefully it fixes this error.