Capacity Estimation Drill

Overview

Translate traffic assumptions into concrete compute, cache, and storage sizing decisions.

Capacity math should shape architecture before implementation.

You will build 6 architecture steps that model production dependencies.

You will run 1 failure experiment to observe bottlenecks and recovery behavior.

Success target: Tier budgets hold under peak load with measurable safety margin.

Learning Objectives

• Can convert assumptions into tier-level capacity numbers
• Can justify headroom and cache targets quantitatively
• Can discuss capacity risks using p95 and saturation metrics

Prerequisites

• Topic Hub: RPS budgeting
• Chapter 28: Capacity Estimation
• Prior Lab: Your First System

Experiments

1. Reduce API instances below required headroom to simulate saturation