"I'm a sysadmin by profession but when I write code I don't
   want to have to worry about backups, scaling, etc. Those
   things get in the way of creating the product."

This is how you get yourself into the type of problems OP is talking about. You can't rely on infrastructure to intelligently save you. You can't rely on SAAS options to solve your design issues. If you aren't asking questions from the beginning like:

"How will I scale my product?"

"How will it handle failures?"

"How is it going to work at scale?"

Then you're going to be dealing with complex troubleshooting issues in a fragile infrastructure.

Don't try to replace the engine mid-flight.