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System Design & Performance > Scale, consistency and failureQueues, and what happens when the queue is full
Phase 06Scale, consistency and failure314 of 434

Queues, and what happens when the queue is full

A queue absorbs a spike and defers work. It also hides a capacity problem until the backlog is measured in hours.

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This one runs on your machine rather than in the browser workbench. Work to the outcomes below, then come back and mark it complete.

You should now be able to

  • Use a queue to smooth a bursty workload
  • Instrument queue depth and age, not just throughput
  • Decide what to shed when the backlog cannot be caught up
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