I've added for you on bitbucket an experimental global parameter "nocache" for NaviServer, which deactivates on the C level all caching via ns_cache_* (but maintaining some statistics). Default is false; activate it in the section ns/parameters if desired.
By this you can estimate the performance impact, when caching via ns_cache is deactivated for your site when considering horizontal scaling. of course, the other forms for caching are not addressed by this.
