Beyond the Single PostgreSQL Node, Part One
When Disco was the hot new music, the people who built database management systems based their praxis around the then-correct assumption that hardware was extremely expensive, and hence that procuring things like more storage, let alone more machines on which they would run, could be counted on to require significant capital resources. This could only happen on the time scale of quarters, even if it was deemed worthwhile to fight the fights needed to procure them. The above conditions informed the practice of hardening single nodes against failure without adding significant hardware resources in the process. This practice continues, and it's a good thing to have. However. Over the past few decades, hardware resources have been dropping precipitously in cost even when acquired via capital expenditure, and tax (read subsidy here) regimes have been altered to put a massive thumb on the scale to favor operational expenditures. This in turn has driven technologies that made it easy to m