Calculating Galera gcache for PXC
The answer to your first question is No

When you execute Sleep function, it only block current session and not related to another sessions. So all other sessions work properly

But about your second question.

Note: gcache used to store only writesets in circular buffer style.

Usually a service have a Peak time that users have huge interactive to it.

So at the peak time of the system execute those queries that you said in your question.

After that use this formula to find writesets data bytes per minute

(second wsrep_received_bytes – first wsrep_received_bytes) + (second wsrep_replicated_bytes – first wsrep_replicated_bytes)


Well, now you can decide How much time you want to keep changes to server.

For example if writesets data is 10 MB per minutes and you plan to keep changes data to 24 hours you need to set gcache size to 14400 MB.

Note: In my opinion for more certainty add 20% more to writesets data bytes per minute. In this case for example consider 12 MB instead of 10 MB.