I'm not sure if "MS stack is hard to set up and use" is the right way to characterize it. SQL Server is probably the easiest full-fledged RDBMS to get up and r

I'm not sure if "MS stack is hard to set up and use" is the right way to characterize it. SQL Server is probably the easiest full-fledged RDBMS to get up and running, for instance, and Visual Studio is among the most friction free environments I've seen (for getting started at least). However, I wholeheartedly agree that MS stack, mostly Windows, is hard to configure, monitor, and administer when you want to horizontally scale, primarily because of the GUI driven configuration mindset and proprietary nature.