Systems and methods for providing web service instances to support traffic demands for a particular web service in a large-scale distributed system are disclosed. An example method includes determining a peak historical service load for the web service. The service load capacity for each existing web service instance may then be determined. The example method may then calculate the remaining service load after subtracting the sum of the service load capacity of the existing web service instances from the peak historical service load for the web service. The number of web service instances necessary in the large-scale distributed system may be determined based on the remaining service load. The locations of the web service instances may be determined and changes may be applied to the large-scale system based on the number of web service instances necessary in the large-scale distributed system.