Performance and Scalability Models for a Hypergrowth e-Commerce Web Site

TL;DR

This paper presents a case study on capacity planning for a rapidly growing e-commerce website, introducing new metrics and spreadsheet techniques for forecasting server demand and scalability.

Contribution

It introduces new performance metrics and spreadsheet methods specifically designed for forecasting server capacity needs in hypergrowth e-commerce sites.

Findings

Effective demand metric for site planning

Doubling period as a growth indicator

Spreadsheet techniques for capacity forecasting

Abstract

The performance of successful Web-based e-commerce services has all the allure of a roller-coaster ride: accelerated fiscal growth combined with the ever-present danger of running out of server capacity. This chapter presents a case study based on the author's own capacity planning engagement with one of the hottest e-commerce Web sites in the world. Several spreadsheet techniques are presented for forecasting both short-term and long-term trends in the consumption of server capacity. Two new performance metrics are introduced for site planning and procurement: the effective demand, and the doubling period.