> To be clear, the above specs would be pointless for most databases, as almost nothing scales to handle this kind of hardware well — and almost nobody tries.
That strikes me as the more interesting takeaway sentence.
It's not that much RAM if you think of it as 24 8-core machines.
Ten million users [1] averaging maybe averaging 40 or so interactions per year (filling out an expense report isn't a common task for a lot of those users)? Napkin math of 1.2 qps. Even if you 10x that for backing workflows, and double it because users are more active than expencted, that's still only 30qps.
While I think the figures might be a little conservative (or might work for the mean, but not the peak) it is a little odd to imagine why an expenses app would need a database that syncronises via a private blockchain to track expenses. It would be interesting to understand the rationale.
That strikes me as the more interesting takeaway sentence.
It's not that much RAM if you think of it as 24 8-core machines.