The idea that everyone needs to scale horizontally has become very much less true than it was. Only Very Large sites have to go very horizontal at all these days.
Given 8 x 3Ghz core / 32GB / 5TB machines for cheap you're packing as much power as 15+ servers of a few years ago. Even quite large web sites can be run off a few beefy (but cheap!) servers. This means money saved on network infrastructure, power, space, management, etc.
Probably 80% of the Alexa top 1000 could each be run off less than 20 modern beefy machines.
Comments
The idea that everyone needs to scale horizontally has become very much less true than it was. Only Very Large sites have to go very horizontal at all these days.
Given 8 x 3Ghz core / 32GB / 5TB machines for cheap you're packing as much power as 15+ servers of a few years ago. Even quite large web sites can be run off a few beefy (but cheap!) servers. This means money saved on network infrastructure, power, space, management, etc.
Probably 80% of the Alexa top 1000 could each be run off less than 20 modern beefy machines.