Capacity Planning — Template

Where are we today? Include actual numbers, not vibes.

Resource	Capacity	Current Usage	% Used	Headroom
CPU	X cores	X cores avg / X peak	XX%	OK
Memory	X GB	X GB avg / X peak	XX%	OK
Storage	X TB	X TB / growing X GB/week	XX%	Watch
Database connections	X max	X avg / X peak	XX%	OK
Request throughput	X req/s capacity	X req/s peak	XX%	OK

What does load look like? Daily cycles, weekly patterns, seasonal spikes. Link to the dashboard that shows this.

Timeframe	Expected Growth	Projected Peak	Current Ceiling	Risk
3 months	+XX% traffic / +XX% data	X req/s	X req/s	OK
6 months				At Risk
12 months				Will Hit Ceiling

What will break first as load increases? Be specific about which resource hits its limit and what the symptoms will be.

Bottleneck	Limit	When We Hit It	Symptom	Fix
Resource or component	Hard limit	At X traffic / X data volume	What users will see	How to fix it and rough effort

Action	Priority	Cost	Timeline	Impact
Specific action to increase capacity or remove bottleneck	Do Now	$X/month or X eng-days	X weeks	Extends ceiling to X
	Plan
	Monitor

Scenario	Monthly Cost	Change	Notes
Current	$X,XXX	Baseline
After recommendations	$X,XXX	+$XXX (+XX%)	Covers next X months
If we do nothing	$X,XXX	Same	Risk: outage at X traffic level

Capacity Planning Template