Throughput

  • Always think about average throughput versus peak throughput
    • Estimate for peak to be safe
    • Peak should be estimated pragmatically
  • Find out the daily active users (DAU)
    • If not possible, estimate peak DAU from MAU
  • Thousand = 10^3, e.g., KB kilo
  • Million = 10^6, e.g., MB mega
  • Billion = 10^9, e.g., GB giga
  • Trillion = 10^12, e.g., TB terra
  • Quadrillion = 10^15, e.g., PB peta
  • A modern SQL database can handle about 1,000 transactions per second (TPS)
  • How many queries per second for a database?
  • A web server can handle about 10,000 requests per second (RPS)

Storage

  • Image ~100 KB
  • MP3 file ~1 MB
  • MP4 file ~100 MB