Hi I'm a new programmer and I've been working on my first real application that I'm going to launch in the coming weeks. The app uses some neat ideas around photo sharing, but basically is just a photo sharing web app. I'd like to find information out about what type of loads a small rails 3 application can handle but I'm not sure where to start. Do I need to run benchmarking tests to find how many requests it can handle and how fast it does this? How does one find statistics like this for their application?

Ultimately I'd like an idea of the maximum amount of traffic the site could handle, or could someday handle, to get my barings down with what I'm working with. I wouldn't want to set in motion a viral marketing campaign if the site couldn't handle over a few hundred concurrent requests. I'm not trying to jump the gun and prepare for a ton of traffic that I don't have yet, but I really would like to have some understanding and an idea of where to go next in terms how the usability and scalability of my application. 

Thanks a lot!