Well as I recall there were a few reasons that people focused on reliability in hardware in the late 90s: 1. Shared state storage systems that supported replic

Well as I recall there were a few reasons that people focused on reliability in hardware in the late 90s: 1. Shared state storage systems that supported replication were rare (I think Oracle and Informix maybe?) 2. Virtualization software was in its infancy (did SunOS have something before Solaris?) 3. RAM and hardware were waaaaay more expensive, meaning you often had to buy more pure metal just to answer questions fast enough At least that's my take on it based on my dim faded memories