Well, yeah, I noticed you guys' response to one of the comments on the blog post indicated that the problem machine had a different workload (additional tasks or something). That caused the additional writes, which then caused the latency for the main app on the box.

I think your point still stands about logging, being cautious about blocking I/O calls, etc. But, it seems the bigger point is one of how your overall system is architected, which proccesses run where, dedicating like nodes to their tasks vs. potential quality/consistency issues arising from having some pull double-duty, etc.

Those seemed to be the source of the real issue here.