Testing a $6 server under load (1 vCPU / 1GB RAM) - interesting limits with Nginx and Gunicorn

I ran a small load test on a very small DigitalOcean droplet, $6 CAD: 1 vCPU / 1 GB RAM Nginx -> Gunicorn => Python app k6 for load testing At ~200 virtual users the server handled ~1700 req/s without issues. When I pushed to ~1000 VUs the system collapsed to ~500 req/s with a lot of TIME_WAIT connections (~4096) and connection resets. Two changes made a large difference: increasing nginx work