[nostrebored]

How about when that operation is at the core of your business logic and happens multiple time a day? How about when it's a blocking operation?

There are plenty of cases where your rule doesn't hold true, and I don't think that they're that uncommon.

Plus having many machines has the advantage of a higher granularity of control over workload and balancing.

[Joeri]

Hey, I'm building a hadoop system myself, so I know there are workloads where the rule doesn't apply. Like all rules there are exceptions.