Where are the session variables saved?

Question

Where exactly are session variables saved? Cookies? Server memory?

Again where are Application variables saved?

Answer 1

Variables put into Session are stored wherever the configured SessionStateProvider is configured to store them.

The default SessionStateProvideruses what's referred to as In Process (InProc) Session and the storage location for this is in server memory, inside the memory space of the ASP.NET worker process.

You can configure your own SessionStateProvider to store Session variables elsewhere, such as out of process, in a database.

Application variables are stored in ApplicationState which is also stored in the memory space of the ASP.NET worker process. Unlike Session State, Application State applies to all users and sessions. As far as I am aware, There is no configuration to store ApplicationState elsewhere; if you need to store lots of application data then you may want to look at ASP.NET Caching.