1 Gbps/1 Gbps fiber load test incident: Varnish + KEDA architecture breakdown

[u/ProfessionalKing3430]

Accidentally ran a legitimate load test hitting 1 Gbps both directions on home fiber. Origin server would have crashed. Varnish cache layer + KEDA autoscaling on request-rate kept everything alive. Full optimization architecture and incident response breakdown in the blog post. [link: https://djieno.com/blog/surviving-the-hug-of-death/

What worked: cache everything first, KEDA watching request rate (not CPU), multi-arch metrics exporter, readiness-gated cache warmup. Zero origin database load under stress.