[peteretep]

    > Managers often think throwing more
    > hardware at the problem will fix things

It often will...

    > no-one had done any kind of performance
    > analysis

... is the moral of this story

[nur0n]

I think we agree on the basic point: you can't decide what the most cost effective solution is until analysis is carried out. But an effective performance analysis can't be executed without an understanding of the machine.

Lacking low level knowledge can only create blind spots in the analysis.