[porker]

One topic I haven't seen widely discussed in books but happens in the real world is back pressure. I think you're getting to this with "attack your designs", though I find it hard to predict.

Have you any thoughts, books or resources you turn to, to make sure the whole pipeline is balanced - or doesn't fall over when one part is overloaded?

[thecleaner]

You need to see what happens in you data processing chain. The pipeline is only "balanced" based on what Rps you want. Throughput calculations are easier to do. Latencies are harder to predict but honestly latency calculations without sensible benchmarks are horseshit.

Back pressure is refusing to let the queue unbounded or take in more requests than slots available. That's pretty much it.