Current storage trends like file growth, server virtualization, and web-scale applications are creating I/O bottlenecks that traditional solutions cannot effectively address. A new approach called centralized storage caching uses high-speed memory in scalable caching appliances to dramatically increase performance metrics like IOPS and throughput, while reducing storage overhead. By seamlessly caching frequently accessed data from disk to memory, these appliances can accelerate various data center systems and applications by eliminating I/O bottlenecks.