This is a real problem in trying to learn how to scale systems. I love learning about scaling but I've never personally worked on high volume applications, there's only so much you can do by reading stuff or watching tutorials or emulating high volume in your side projects. There's so many x-factors that come into play that you can only learn on the job.
Using services like loader.io I could simulate high traffic. That opened up a new world. I was able to test different configurations under stress to find the setup that performed the best for a specific application. Highly recommend stress or load testing.
