On another site, in another context, it probably would be, but here it's really presented as a contrast of scale-up versus scale-out - something the regular audience of highscalability will certainly grok.
In context...
'Stack Overflow still uses a scale-up strategy. No clouds in site. With their SQL Servers loaded with 384 GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD, AWS would cost a fortune. The cloud would also slow them down, making it harder to optimize and troubleshoot system issues. Plus, SO doesn’t need a horizontal scaling strategy. Large peak loads, where scaling out makes sense, hasn’t been a problem because they’ve been quite successful at sizing their system correctly.'
It's an acknowledgement of their relatively unique strategy and the short list of caveats that make it possible.
On another site, in another context, it probably would be, but here it's really presented as a contrast of scale-up versus scale-out - something the regular audience of highscalability will certainly grok.
In context...
'Stack Overflow still uses a scale-up strategy. No clouds in site. With their SQL Servers loaded with 384 GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD, AWS would cost a fortune. The cloud would also slow them down, making it harder to optimize and troubleshoot system issues. Plus, SO doesn’t need a horizontal scaling strategy. Large peak loads, where scaling out makes sense, hasn’t been a problem because they’ve been quite successful at sizing their system correctly.'
It's an acknowledgement of their relatively unique strategy and the short list of caveats that make it possible.