I had more than one project where people were cheaper than machines, and going tight on budgets for machine resources led to the project surviving instead of dying.
Hell, a big example of that is Stack Overflow, which runs a very busy site on much less hw than they would have needed otherwise, just by taking high level optimization questions up front.
I can spot, however, kernel-mode HTTP servers (including customized ones), and heavy use of pretty advanced stack with good optimization capabilities. The choices of the stack do make a big impact, something that they have mentioned several times, with the summary of "paying Microsoft licenses paid back very well compared to using popular open-source stacks"
Remember, Performance is also a feature. Both a non-functional one (to reduce your costs) or functional one (to have happier users).
Hell, a big example of that is Stack Overflow, which runs a very busy site on much less hw than they would have needed otherwise, just by taking high level optimization questions up front.
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