System Design

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System Design

On September 3, 2018 in interviewing 2 minutes read

An algorithm for solving system design interviews:

  1. Requirements
    • Extract use cases
    • Understand: Users x Performances x ACID x CAP
  2. Math
    • Data in (Concurrency) X Data out
    • Latency x Throughput
  3. Main bottlenecks
    • Availability
    • Performance (Response time, Scalability, CPU / IO / Network bound applications)
    • Confidentiality (Encryption)
  4. High level design
    • Evaluate use cases: what is the flow for each of them?
    • This usually results in, at a minimum:
    • Application layer & responsibilities
    • Database layer & responsibilities
  5. Detailed design
    • Start small & grow big
    • Profiling: Estimate & test load for every use case and identify bottle necks
      • Requests per second resulting in:
        • Write per second (Where? What?)
        • Read per second (Where? What?)
        • Handy reference: 2.5 million seconds per month
    • Horizontal X Vertical Scaling - DNS Server: Resource allocation
    • Resolves the text URL for a particular web resource to the TCP-IP address of the system or service: Must be quick
    • Directs to either:
      • Proxies / Firewalls
      • CDNs: Geographically distributed for static assets: templates , themes , images, etc.
      • Cloud Backend: Web & App functionalities - Load Balancing: Horizontal scaling & Redundancy
    • Software X Hardware
    • Zero Uptime & Increased Performances:
    • Responsibilities:
      • Health checks
      • Load distribution algorithms
    • Challenge: Session Management
      • Sticky sessions X External storage - Web application layer: Serves dynamic content & renders HTML
    • Multiple instances serve independent requests
    • Off-Line Processing: Reduces latency and/or handles batch processing
      • Message Queues: Queue work & process in parallel
      • Scheduling System Tasks: Perform recurring tasks offline
      • Specialized infrastructure: Map-Reduce for big data - Content Performances: Improves use of resources
    • Caching
      • Where?
        • Which layer? Application X Dedicated X Database
        • In memory for vertical scaling?
      • Writethrough cache: Write to cache and then continously push to DB
      • Challenge: Concurrency & Cache Invalidation at App Layer - Manageability: Platform & Management Layer
    • Separates the DB and Web application: Scale the pieces independently.
      • Independent API: Re-use layers for different purposes
    • Includes:
      • Automation & Cost Improvement:
        • Just-in-time Infrastructure
        • Reduces human interaction & errors
      • Monitoring and Alerts
      • Log files
    • Development practices:
      • Source control
      • Multi-step deployment - Database Layer
    • Type: Relational X Graph X Key-Value stores
    • Availability: Master and Standby
    • Performances:
      • Master and Read Replicas
      • Horizontal Scaling of Data Storage: Sharding for storing data on separate databases
      • Per Table Indexes: Avoid searches in your data
    • Data Loss: Backups
  6. Security
    • Think of Confidentiality / Integrity / Availability
    • Prevention: Lock out attackers
    • Shared vs Dedicated Instances
    • Access Control & Authentication:
      • Active Directory
      • Two factor authentication
    • Firewalls (Security Groups) between layers of architecture
    • Data & Traffic Encryption - Detection: Find anomalous behaviour
    • Baselining
    • DDoS mitigation - Reaction: Admins & System take appropriate measure to stop attack
    • Alarms
    • Honeypots
  7. Low Level
    • Database Schema
    • RESTful API
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