CACHEBOX vs building your own cache server

When you add up all the time it takes to build your own server, tune the caching engine to give you the best performance from your hardware, design a user interface that makes it easy for both technical and non-technical staff to use the cache, train staff how to use it, learn how to generate and interpret reports and add the ongoing costs of daily administration and maintenance (upgrading software packages etc) you’ll realise that CACHEBOX is actually great value for money.

With over a decade of caching expertise gained from working with schools, governments, internet service providers, and enterprises of all sizes, we’ve designed CACHEBOX to make it simple to deploy, easy to use on a day-to-day basis, economical to maintain and value for money.

So, what have we done?

Hardware and performance

• Performance tested many hardware and software combinations to create caching appliances that deliver up to 2500 request per second in a 1U rack mountable format.  Other vendors only achieve this with bigger, more expensive devices
• Used industrial grade CompactFlash to store the OS, application and configuration data.  Not having the operating system on hard disks massively improves reliability and device availability
• Rigorously tested CACHEBOX to ensure that when installed on your network it’s running at peak performance

Software

• Used our own custom distribution of Linux which has been designed to build the OS in ram during each boot making it quick to load and run
• Created custom extensions to Squid, the caching engine used by CACHEBOX, to support content delivery networks and make it easy to cache large objects like flash video files
• Added an on-box adaptive firewall to give you granular control of traffic passing through the CACHEBOX as well as making sure that unused ports are automatically locked down
• Thought about how you’re going to use the device and the fact that you might need non-technical staff to perform tasks. All CACHEBOX administration takes place via a secure, easy to use web interface that lets you delegate to administrators anywhere in the world
• Designed an upgrade facility that applies feature, performance and security updates from one update file.  In contrast, upgrading a standard Linux server requires down time and in-depth knowledge of both the application and the operating system

Training and support

• Built in extensive online Help documentation and created detailed user manuals for both novice and expert users
• Designed support packages that give you access to our caching experts so you dont have to worry about software and hardware issues

In our experience, many organisations find the benefits of using a CACHEBOX far outweigh those of the self-built approach. However, if you’re still undecided, get in touch and we’ll help you work out what’s best for you and your business.  If building a cache server is the right answer for you, we’ll tell you as much.