EOS recource question

Hi, guys, I have been coding EOS Daaps for some time now and I have stumbled upon interesting questions.

  1. When you store data on a table in a smart contract, where does the data being stored? On RAM memory? Do you need to stake more tokens as your table grows bigger?

  2. How to monitor and benchmark smart contracts performance? (Resources consumed, transaction speed to the contract, data writing speed) I need to gather as much data as possible about my smart contracts.