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stack overflow has no problem serving entire planet from just four SQL Servers (https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-ar...)

There is really nothing wrong with a large vertically scaled up SQL server. You need to be either really really large large scale - or really really UNSKILLED in sql as to keep your relational model and working set in SQL so bad that you reach its limits



>or really really UNSKILLED in sql as to keep your relational model and working set in SQL so bad that you reach its limits

Sadly that's the case at my current job. Zero thought put into table design, zero effort into even formatting our stored procedures in a remotely readable way, zero attempts to cache data on the application side even when it's glaringly obvious. We actually brought in a consultant to diagnose our SQL Server performance issues (I'm sure we paid a small fortune for that) and the DB team and all of the other higher ups capable of actually enforcing change rejected every last one of his suggestions.


> There is really nothing wrong with a large vertically scaled up SQL server.

Large or small, it's always going to be a single point of failure. All hardware is fallible, especially if we're talking about a commodity box rather than a mainframe or something.




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