# Not Just Scale

DevFeed: [Not Just Scale](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/not-just-scale-12558.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://brooker.co.za/blog/2024/06/04/scale.html>)

Author: Marc Brooker

Published: 2024-06-04T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Marc Brooker's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/marc-brooker-s-blog.md>), [Marc Brooker's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/marc-brooker-s-blog-2.md>)

Topics: [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/distributed-systems.md>), [Scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/scalability.md>), [Availability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/availability.md>), [cloud-infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud-infrastructure.md>), [Architecture & Design](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/architecture-design.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>)

Tags: [availability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/availability.md>), [complexity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/complexity.md>), [cost](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cost.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed-systems.md>), [efficiency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/efficiency.md>), [scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scalability.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that powerful single machines can handle substantial workloads, but distributed systems remain valuable for more than scalability. Their main benefits include improved availability through redundancy, greater data durability through replication, and better resource utilization in multi-tenant systems. The article also acknowledges that some systems are distributed unnecessarily, increasing complexity and reducing efficiency.

## Source excerpt

Not Just Scale Bookmarking this so I can stop writing it over and over. It seems like everywhere I look on the internet these days, somebody's making some form of the following argument: You don't need distributed systems! Computers are so fast these days you can serve all your customers off a single machine! This argument is silly and reductive. But first, let's look for the kernel of truth. One Machine Is All You Need? This argument is based on a kernel of truth: modern machines are extremely powerful, can do vast amounts of work every second, and can fit all the data belonging to even some rather large businesses in memory. Thousands, or even millions, of requests per second are achievable. Hundreds of gigabits per second. Terabytes of memory, and even more storage. Gigabytes per second of storage bandwidth. Millions of IOPS. Modern machines are super fast, and software which can take advantage of that speed can achieve incredible things. It's also true that many systems are distributed thoughtlessly, or wastefully, or in ways that increase complexity and reduce efficiency. At the time I'm writing this, EC2 offers single instances with 32TiB of memory and 896 vCPUs, and 200Gbps of network bandwidth. Many very important workloads can fit on one such machine. Or could, if scale was all we cared about. It's Not Just Scale Scale, and scalability, is only a small part of the overall reason distributed systems are interesting. Other practical reasons include: Availability. Systems made up of multiple redundant components can offer levels of availability that single-machine systems simply can't match. Distributed systems achieve exponentially better availability at linear cost, in a way that's almost entirely hands-off. Single-machine systems can only achieve higher availability by increasing time-to-failure or reducing time-to-recovery, which can be both complex and expensive. Durability. Making multiple copies of data on multiple machines is the only credible way to m