Systems and methods that aggregate memory capacity of multiple computers into a single unified cache, via a layering arrangement. Such layering arrangement is scalable to a plurality of machines and includes a data manager component, an object manager component and a distributed object manager component, which can be implemented in a modular fashion. Moreover, the layering arrangement can provide for an explicit cache tier (e.g., cache-aside architecture) that applications are aware about, wherein decision are made explicitly which objects to put/remove in such applications (as opposed to an implicit cache wherein application do not know the existence of the cache).