Once you commit to a microservices architecture, you’re also committing to distributed systems, which require you to cluster your system’s nodes instead of sticking with one node – even if one node is really all you need. VictoriaMetrics has a different perspective: We believe microservices shouldn’t be the default and that companies should start with monoliths until reality actually demands they scale and shift from one node to a cluster of nodes. As a result, engineers can end up building distributed systems and using database clustering long before they need to – even when a monolithic system relying on a single node would have scaled well enough.