The signs of an overloaded MongoDB server are as clear as the chaos in the Sultan's kitchen. Normally, the chef serves meals in seconds, just like MongoDB returning a query result in ~10ms. But with the wedding crowd, orders take longer. Response times stretch to seconds as the chef juggles too many pots. If the pressure doesn't let up, some guests go hungry, mirroring MongoTimeoutException errors in your Java app. You'll see logs like " Timed out after 5000 ms while waiting to connect ," especially if you've set a tight timeout. If you're monitoring with MongoDB Atlas, the CPU usage graph will look like the chef's stress level, spiking to 100%. Network connections might also hit their limit, with the server rejecting new requests.