Mastering System Design: From Monoliths to Scalable Distributed Architectures

Lesson 1

Scoping Functional & Non-Functional Requirements

Analyze prompt ambiguity by eliciting core features, scale targets, and strict SLAs to establish system boundaries during interviews.

Lesson 2

Performing Back-of-the-Envelope Capacity Estimation

Calculate QPS, peak throughput, storage growth, and network bandwidth requirements using rapid estimation heuristics.

Lesson 3

Applying the CAP and PACELC Theorems

Evaluate trade-offs between consistency, availability, and latency across normal operations and network partition scenarios.

Lesson 4

Selecting Database Paradigms for Scale

Compare relational, document, wide-column, and key-value datastores based on access patterns, query complexity, and scalability limits.

Lesson 5

Drafting End-to-End Architecture Diagrams

Construct high-level system component diagrams mapping clients, load balancers, services, and storage tiers.

Lesson 6

Implementing Consistent Hashing Topologies

Build distributed key distribution architectures using virtual nodes to minimize data migration during cluster resizing.

Lesson 7

Designing Database Sharding & Partition Strategies

Partition relational databases using range, hash, and directory methods while avoiding hotspotting and sequential key traps.

Lesson 8

Managing Cross-Shard Queries & Secondary Indexes

Construct scatter-gather queries, global indexes, and denormalized tables to retrieve sharded data efficiently.

Lesson 9

Implementing Two-Phase Commit (2PC) Protocols

Coordinate distributed database transactions across multiple independent nodes with atomic commit guarantees.

Lesson 10

Resolving Distributed Transactions via the Saga Pattern

Orchestrate long-running distributed workflows using compensating transactions and event choreography.

Lesson 11

Deploying Consensus Algorithms with Raft

Configure leader election, log replication, and safety invariants in distributed replicated state machines.

Lesson 12

Managing Multi-Region Active-Active Replication

Synchronize distributed datastores globally while resolving write conflicts using vector clocks and CRDTs.

Lesson 13

Configuring Multi-Tier Caching Architectures

Implement layered memory caches (Redis/Memcached) behind origin servers to reduce database load and latency.

Lesson 14

Enforcing Cache Invalidation & Synchronization Strategies

Execute cache-aside, write-through, and time-to-live policies to maintain data freshness and consistency.

Lesson 15

Mitigating Cache Stampedes & Thundering Herds

Prevent origin server crashes during cache expiration using request coalescing locks and probabilistic early expiration.

Lesson 16

Defending Against Cache Penetration & Avalanches

Configure bloom filters and randomized TTL jitter to block malicious lookups and synchronized cache expirations.

Lesson 17

Architecting Edge & CDN Delivery Pipelines

Configure CDN cache directives, origin shielding, and stale-while-revalidate headers to accelerate global asset delivery.

Lesson 18

Deploying WebAssembly (Wasm) at the Edge

Compute dynamic request transformations, authorization checks, and personalization logic directly at CDN edge nodes.

Lesson 19

Architecting Event-Driven Messaging Foundations

Design decoupled pub-sub pipelines using topics, partitions, producers, and consumer groups.

Lesson 20

Configuring Kafka Clusters in KRaft Mode

Initialize and manage Kafka brokers without ZooKeeper using native KRaft consensus and controller quorum metadata.

Lesson 21

Calculating Partition Sizing & Throughput Math

Compute required partition counts, disk retention sizes, and network bandwidth limits for high-volume event streams.

Lesson 22

Enforcing Exactly-Once Processing Semantics

Configure idempotent producers and transactional consumer offsets to eliminate duplicate message processing.

Lesson 23

Building Stateful Streams with Kafka Streams

Process real-time windowed aggregations, joins, and stateful transformations using local RocksDB stores.

Lesson 24

Integrating Systems via Kafka Connect

Deploy source and sink connectors to stream change data capture (CDC) events between databases and data lakes.

Lesson 25

Preventing Consumer Rebalance Storms

Tune consumer heartbeat intervals, session timeouts, and cooperative sticky assignors to maintain stream stability.

Lesson 26

Implementing Circuit Breakers & Fallback Patterns

Isolate failing downstream dependencies using circuit breaker states, bulkhead isolation, and graceful degradation.

Lesson 27

Engineering Rate Limiting & Traffic Shaping

Protect backend APIs from abuse and traffic spikes using token bucket, leaky bucket, and sliding window algorithms.

Lesson 28

Designing Idempotent API Endpoints

Construct fault-tolerant client request handlers using idempotency keys, deduplication tables, and optimistic locking.

Lesson 29

Establishing Distributed Tracing & Observability

Trace end-to-end request latencies across microservice boundaries using distributed context propagation and spans.

Lesson 30

Simulating Failures via Chaos Engineering

Validate system resilience and recovery SLAs by injecting network partitions, node crashes, and latency spikes into production.