An embodiment of the invention provides a method comprising: permitting an application to be aware to be aware of a distribution of a data of the application across a cache and a permanent storage device. The cache comprises a solid state device and the permanent storage device comprises a disk or a memory. In yet another embodiment of the invention, an apparatus comprises: a caching application program interface configured to permit an application to be aware to be aware of a distribution of a data of the application across a cache and a permanent storage device. A caching application program interface is configured to determine an input/output strategy to consume the data based on the distribution of the data.