ELI5: What is Capacity planning?
It’s like making sure you have enough chairs before throwing a birthday party. Capacity planning means figuring out how much computer power you need now and in the future so nothing crashes when lots of people show up.
Definition
Capacity planning is the process of determining and provisioning the resources (compute, storage, network, and personnel) needed to handle current and future workloads, including peak demand scenarios. In security architecture, capacity planning ensures that systems remain available and performant even during high-load events like DDoS attacks or unexpected spikes in legitimate traffic.
Key Details
- Must account for peak loads, not just average usage
- Undercapacity leads to availability failures; overcapacity wastes resources
- Cloud environments enable dynamic capacity scaling (auto-scaling groups)
- Redundant capacity provides buffer for planned maintenance or unexpected failures
- DDoS mitigation planning requires significantly higher capacity reserves than normal operations
Connections
- Parent: resilience-and-redundancy — capacity planning is foundational to resilient architectures
- See also: scalability