This is a success story from the New Relic team about their experience with load testing and diagnosing memory usage issues in an Elixir-based API gateway. The team conducted thorough load testing to understand how their BEAM VM handled stress, and after two years of observing and learning, they were able to reproduce the issue and identify its root cause: a large number of processes created for SSL connections that held redundant data. They discovered that providing certificates to each individual process was causing this redundancy, and by using an ETS table to store the CA certs in one place, they reduced memory usage by 60-70%. This experience highlights the importance of understanding how tools like BEAM VM can fail and the value of diagnosing and resolving lower-level issues. The team's expertise in Elixir and Erlang allowed them to leverage powerful tools like the Erlang Observer to troubleshoot the issue and make a significant impact on their system's performance.