"Jeff makes an insightful point that, when designing for scale, you should design for expected load, ensure it still works at x10, but don't worry about scaling to x100. The problem here is that x100 scale usually calls for a different and usually more complicated solution than what you would implement for x1; a x100 solution can be unnecessary, wasteful, slower to implement, and have worse performance at a x1 load. I would add that you learn a lot about where the bottlenecks will be at x100 scale when you are running at x10 scale, so it often is better to start simpler, learn, then redesign rather than jumping into a more complicated solution that might be a poor match for the actual load patterns."
Comments
This is tremendous advice:
"Jeff makes an insightful point that, when designing for scale, you should design for expected load, ensure it still works at x10, but don't worry about scaling to x100. The problem here is that x100 scale usually calls for a different and usually more complicated solution than what you would implement for x1; a x100 solution can be unnecessary, wasteful, slower to implement, and have worse performance at a x1 load. I would add that you learn a lot about where the bottlenecks will be at x100 scale when you are running at x10 scale, so it often is better to start simpler, learn, then redesign rather than jumping into a more complicated solution that might be a poor match for the actual load patterns."