How Caching Helps Cut Backup Costs

I received a great question about our recent video Top 6 Ways to Cut Storage Costs, specifically how can a scalable caching appliance reduce backup costs.

Basically, backup architectures are often (but not always) tied to the number of storage controllers and the amount of capacity deployed.

When storage is configured for performance, administrators often need to deploy a greater number of disk spindles and more storage controllers than they might need if they were configuring for capacity. When designing backup solutions for this "performance-optimized" storage, the licensing costs often climb in relation to the number of controllers and amount of disk over-provisioning.

When a scalable caching appliance is deployed -- reducing the storage footprint by eliminating unnecessary controllers and spindles -- the licensing and equipment costs for the backup infrastructure go down.

So it comes down to designing effective, balanced data center architectures from the start. When over-provisioning is rampant -- often the case with traditional "add more disk" approaches to performance -- the cascading costs of management, maintenance, and backup can result in excess costs as well. Designing in scalable caching appliances keeps storage footprints to a minimum and in turn can help shrink backup costs.