Single instance : in or out?

Single Instance is introduced in SCCM 2012 in the Content Library component of the Distribution Point  role, to help reduce the storage capacity needed on the DP servers.

Microsoft used a similar technology, called Single Instance Storage (SIS), that was introduced in RIS (Remote Installation Services) in Windows 2000, then used by Exchange 4 – 2007 and by the Storage edition of Windows Server 2008.

Great! but I just found that this technology (SIS) has been dropped in Exchange 2010, according to an Exchange team blog post on Technet. The conclusion of the article reads :

In summary, Exchange 2010 changes the messaging landscape. The architectural changes we have implemented enable the commoditization of email – providing very large mailboxes at a low cost. Disk capacity is no longer a premium. Disk space is cheap and IT shops can take advantage of larger, cheaper disks to reduce their overall cost. With Exchange 2010 you can deploy a highly available system with a degree of storage efficiency without SIS at a fraction of the cost that was required with previous versions of Exchange.

So, there you have it. SIS is gone.

Some presenter said at MMS 2011 conference that the space savings in the 70+% has been accomplished in tests scenarios. Anyone has real world numbers in large scale implementations?

I’m hoping that the technology of the Single instance in SCCM does not have the same limitations in scalability as in the SIS technology…

In conclusion, in the SCCM world, disk capacity is a premium and in the Exchange world, disk capacity is no more a premium… who’s right?