What is Capacity Planning

Definition

Capacity planning is the process of forecasting the computing resources, such as compute, storage, and network, that a system will need to meet future demand, ensuring enough capacity to maintain performance while avoiding the cost of significant over-provisioning.

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Ensures resources meet future demand without performance shortfalls
Avoids overspending on significantly over-provisioned infrastructure
Informs scaling and budget decisions with demand forecasts
Reduces the risk of outages from unanticipated load

Glossary: Performance Testing

Real World Example

Ahead of a holiday sales peak, an engineering team uses capacity planning to forecast traffic and provision additional compute and database capacity in advance, so the site stays fast under load without permanently paying for that headroom.

FAQs

What does capacity planning forecast?

The compute, storage, and network resources a system will need to meet projected future demand.

How does cloud change capacity planning?

Elastic cloud resources allow scaling on demand, shifting planning toward right-sizing, autoscaling policies, and cost control.

What happens with poor capacity planning?

Under-provisioning causes slowdowns and outages, while over-provisioning wastes money on idle resources.