Scaling has been cheap, and fun.
Read about our newest data center: http://blog.serverfault.com/post/1432571770/stack-overflows-...
Read about our SQL Server hardware: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/database-upgrade/
Read about our newest data center: http://blog.serverfault.com/post/1432571770/stack-overflows-...
Read about our SQL Server hardware: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/database-upgrade/
EDIT: Actually there's a newer "Web Edition" targeted to roles like this that halves the price. So $7,000 for that server (the details are sparse, but it also sounds like you can opt into it for $15 / month / processor).
That's a lot to someone trying to shoehorn a startup, but is it really a lot for real businesses?
On the server end they still have tremendous headroom in the scaling up department...and that's before the Westmere-EX drops and bumps the top up quite a significant amount. You can add 1TB of memory, and four 8-core processors, to commodity Dell servers. That's before you get into the serious business.
While I congratulate Jeff and Joel I would like to see more numbers about the 'cheap and easy' claim if possible please?