they need at least perform fdatasync before replying to a client, imho. so I do not think it's every x seconds. I am not deeply familiar with scylla so maybe I am mistaken.
> I would expect stronger guarantees from databases.
You can configure it and get lower performance.
> Maybe it's inpractical to expect this in cloud environments...
For benchmarks they use raid0 on local disks(not EBS) in aws vps.