Someone quoted note where he says using AWS for scalability and reliability. Would single VPS have survived being on Hacker News? Would he need to make new VPS

Someone quoted note where he says using AWS for scalability and reliability. Would single VPS have survived being on Hacker News? Would he need to make new VPS to handle the load? I bet AWS scaled up without problems. Also important, it will scale down when spike is done and will only cost what was used. AWS is more reliable, and from this architecture, probably doesn't have to do anything. If the VPS dies, then the site is down until can build new VM. Or have to run two of them at twice the cost. More since he has to setup database or shared storage. That might be overkill for this site, but for some upfront work, he gets something that needs less maintenance. If going to learn, then should do it the right way. He may be scaling for the future, but it is tradeoff to design now instead of later.