And people with 64TB, 256 core machines don't have RAID arrays attached to their machine for this exact reason?
If it's "machines" plural, than you can do replication between the two. There's your fallover in case of complete failure.
If it's "machines" plural, than you can do replication between the two. There's your fallover in case of complete failure.
This is the start of a scaling path that winds down Distributed Systems Avenue, and eventually leads to a place called Hadoop.
(Replication and consensus are remarkably difficult problems that Hadoop solves).
Certainly, and unfortunately, the exact point at which Hadoop becomes the better option over big iron is generally an ongoing debate and shifting target. But there's no doubt that such a point actually exists.
But if it does, then it's a pretty big chunk of data, and a very fast network.
As such, it is actually "Bane's Rule" which states, "you don't understand a distributed computing problem until you can get it to fit on a single machine first."
(Thanks to nekopa, who also referenced it further down in this thread.)