"anchored in the old paradigm of storage being a commodity that must be conserved"
Yeah, such an old paradigm... Just try managing backups for an ever increasing mail store...
Yes, today storage is cheap (even middle-tier storage arrays where the cost per-GB is about 20x of consumer-level disks can be considered cheap), but keeping large volumes of data safe from disaster is not "cheap". Just ask Google how much time it took them to restore those Gmail mailboxes from tape after they got lost in production a few months back. And that's google we're talking about...
Yeah, such an old paradigm... Just try managing backups for an ever increasing mail store...
Yes, today storage is cheap (even middle-tier storage arrays where the cost per-GB is about 20x of consumer-level disks can be considered cheap), but keeping large volumes of data safe from disaster is not "cheap". Just ask Google how much time it took them to restore those Gmail mailboxes from tape after they got lost in production a few months back. And that's google we're talking about...