Do you need to distribute things when you're gaming? For most interactions, I imagine that when the user says "save", replication of the user's data can start at that point, and for most things, ought to finish within a minute or two, freeing up the network/CPU, at least if you're doing it across a private cloud. I imagine that for most of my data, 3 copies in disparate locations would more than suffice. How long does that take?

Having a machine on 24/7 is perhaps a bit wasteful, but what is the electrical use of a mostly idling machine? If you really cared, you could perhaps get something with less power, like a raspberry pi.