Problems / Scaling, easy

The slow ramp

Traffic grows from 800 to 2,400 req/s over the run. The API is sized for today.

Free to open. Runs in your browser, no sign-up.

Your goals

Success ≥ 99%, p99 ≤ 500 ms all the way to the end.

The traffic

800 requests a second, ramping to 3× for 30 seconds: 90% reads, 10% writes.

The system

What each component does in this design, and what calls it. The simulator mimics each one from these settings.

ComponentIts job hereSettings
Load balancerLoad balancerTraffic enters here.Calls API.Layer 4 balancers route by IP and port; layer 7 balancers read HTTP and can route by path or header.–
APIApp serviceLoad balancer forwards to it.Calls Redis cache (checked first), Postgres.Little's law: throughput ≈ concurrency ÷ latency. 200 slots at 50 ms serve about 4,000 req/s.2 replicas × 120 slots · timeout 1.0 s
Redis cacheCacheAPI checks it first for reads.An in-memory cache like Redis usually answers in well under a millisecond inside one region.95% hit rate
PostgresSQL databaseAPI reads it when Redis cache misses. API calls it for writes.Postgres runs one process per connection, which is why poolers like PgBouncer sit in front of busy databases.8 vCPU · 60 connections

Hints

Try it first. Open one hint at a time if you get stuck.

Hint 1

It is fine at the start: look at the end of the run.

Hint 2

Capacity planning: size for the peak plus headroom.

One way to solve it

Scale the API so it handles 2,400 req/s with headroom.

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