It's unlikely the article's author has ever worked at a scale close to Google's. Without exposure to that world, and the problems you encounter, it would be di

It's unlikely the article's author has ever worked at a scale close to Google's. Without exposure to that world, and the problems you encounter, it would be difficult to give a satisfactory answer. After discovering rsync wouldn't work I would have just said "I don't know, I've never worked at that scale," and reframed the conversation from one where I'm trying to guess the right answer to a conversation with more give-and-take.