I'd say that the biggest problem is that they tried to launch their product on what appears[1] to be a 4G host, representing maybe $3-400 of hardware cost (maybe more if you buy premium, I doubt Linode does).
I mean, careful configuration and capacity planning is important. But what happened to straightforward conservative hardware purchasing where you get a much bigger system than you think you need? It's not like bigger hosts are that expensive: splurge for an EC2 2XL ($30/day I think) or three for the week you launch and have a simple plan in place for bringing up more to handle bursty load.
[1] The OOM killer picked a 2.7G Java process to kill. It usually picks the biggest thing available, so I'm guessing at 4G total.
I mean, careful configuration and capacity planning is important. But what happened to straightforward conservative hardware purchasing where you get a much bigger system than you think you need? It's not like bigger hosts are that expensive: splurge for an EC2 2XL ($30/day I think) or three for the week you launch and have a simple plan in place for bringing up more to handle bursty load.
[1] The OOM killer picked a 2.7G Java process to kill. It usually picks the biggest thing available, so I'm guessing at 4G total.