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Build It. Break It.

See why a website slows down—and what helps it recover. Try a miniature cloud system without touching any real infrastructure.

Interactive simulation
  1. Run the simulation and watch requests move.
  2. Try Traffic spike to see where they back up.
  3. Add workers, then choose Recover system to clear the disruption.
Steady traffic0s / 120s

Ready. Runs pause after 120 simulated seconds.

Incoming
100req/s
Completed
0req/s
Waiting
0requests
Dropped
0total
Est. response
—ms

Now, break it.

Recovery restores normal conditions. The backlog still needs to drain.

Find the pressure point

The system has room to breathe.

Workers140 req/sCurrent capacity ceiling
How the simulation works

This is a deterministic teaching model, not a benchmark or cloud sizing recommendation. Requests are interchangeable reads. All requests use a worker; cache hits skip the shared database. Replica regions add worker capacity but share one database.

Capacity = min(healthy workers × 35, database reads/sec ÷ cache-miss share). Each simulated second, requests are served up to capacity, overflow enters the bounded queue, and any remaining overflow is dropped. Waiting requests are served first. Response time is a service-time estimate plus average queue wait; it is not a measured percentile.

Cache warming, writes, network variation, retries, regional routing, and replication consistency are outside this model. One scenario is active at a time. Motion pauses offscreen and when the tab is hidden. Reduced-motion mode keeps the metrics live without moving particles.