Learn AWS Serverless Computing

Physical servers – scale at the physical server layer

When designing for scale in a physical server world, we needed to predict when our peak load may exceed our current capacity. This is the point at which one or more of our servers are fully utilized and become a bottleneck for the application or service. If we had enough foresight, we could order a new server kit and get it racked and bring it into service before it's needed. Unfortunately, this isn't how internet-scale works.

The lead time and work behind getting that new gear into service could include the following processes:

• Securing a capital expenditure budget from finance or the Project Management Office (PMO)
• Procuring hardware from a vendor
• Capacity planning to confirm that there ...