1. A method for estimating system resource usage requirements of a server application comprising: a specific act of defining a set of transaction types performed by the server application in response to user behavior of a client application; a specific act of identifying a set of server application system resources to be measured; a specific act of generating system resource usage measurements for each defined transaction type performed by the server application and for each identified system resource; a specific act of developing at least one system resource cost equation for each identified system resource, wherein the system resource cost equation includes a component from each defined transaction type, wherein the system resource cost equation is based on the system resource usage measurements so that user loads that are reduced to transaction rates are input into the system resource cost equation to estimate resource usage; and a specific act of a user using the estimated resource usage to configure the server application.