The benchmark was very much about whether you CAN scale if you need it. You'd probably not rent this size hardware at Amazon if you needed it on a daily basis. So $26,784 is probably not realistic.

At any rate, as I mention in my longer report on the benchmark [1] the high total translates into very LOW hardware requirements for lesser needs. The number to go by may rather be "10k+ TPS per core for linear scaling ACID transactions." I think that's the number that matters. Linear 10k+/core ACID TPS.

[1] http://community.voltdb.com/sites/default/files/NodejsBenchm...