interesting quote

[Dave Britten]

It does make a good observation about choosing the right platform for the job so as not to grossly overspend on the work that needs to be done. You can frequently fit some simple jobs into an existing system that was meant for more complex work - and it often makes good sense to maximize an existing investment in this way - but if you're scoping a new system, or running out of capacity on the current one, don't overspend on what you need to accommodate the planned work.

This has become particularly important in cloud application environments that tend to be billed on resource consumption, and at vastly different rates for different types and tiers of services, not unlike the time sharing systems that this quote was referring to. For example I could set up an Azure SSIS runtime for $600/mo to run a job that simply extracts data from one system and delivers it to another, or I could do it for about $20/mo with a simple Azure Data Factory pipeline.

Stated another way, don't buy a 42S when all you need is a 20S.