burn rate
also: consumption rate, depletion rate
The speed at which a system consumes resources (CPU, memory, disk space, or network bandwidth), typically measured over time. Often used to predict when a resource will be exhausted.
Burn rate refers to how quickly a finite resource is being used up on a Linux system. This concept is commonly applied to disk space, memory, or bandwidth consumption. For example, if a log file grows by 100 MB per day, that's a burn rate of 100 MB/day—allowing you to calculate how many days remain before the disk fills up.
System administrators use burn rate analysis to predict resource exhaustion and plan for capacity upgrades or cleanup. If a database grows at 5 GB per week and you have 50 GB free, you have roughly 10 weeks before running out of space at the current burn rate.
Burn rate is also relevant in monitoring and observability contexts. For instance, sar or iostat tools can reveal the burn rate of I/O operations, while df and log file analysis help track disk space consumption over time.