For me the scoffing is because Wordpress is such a well-known and popular CMS that there are hosts that specialize in it and have all this architecture pre-bake

For me the scoffing is because Wordpress is such a well-known and popular CMS that there are hosts that specialize in it and have all this architecture pre-baked. Of all the CMS's in the world I can think of, Wordpress seems like the least likely one to require a bespoke from-scratch hosting strategy. I self-hosted Wordpress for years and yes this architecture is not unreasonable for a high volume site. Now I pay WP Engine a fixed annual fee and all this comes out of the box with a few clicks.