System Design Preparation
1. High-Level Design (HLD)
Key Areas to Focus On
1. Scalability and Performance:
○ Horizontal vs. Vertical Scaling.
i. [Link]
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ii. [Link]
iii. [Link]
cal-scaling
○ Asynchronous communication (message queues like RabbitMQ, Kafka),
Publisher Subscriber Model.
i. [Link]
ii. [Link]
bscriber
iii. [Link]
○ Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
i. [Link]
ii. [Link]
2. System Reliability and Fault Tolerance:
○ Data replication and backups.
i. [Link]
ii. [Link]
iii. [Link]
stem-design/
○ Handling failures with retries and fallbacks.
i. [Link]
etry-fallback-timeout-circuit-breaker
ii. [Link]
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3. APIs and Communication:
○ REST APIs vs. gRPC.
i. [Link]
ii. [Link]
○ Event-driven communication for real-time systems.
i. [Link]
ii. [Link]
4. Database Design:
○ Choose SQL or NoSQL based on requirements.
i. [Link]
ii. [Link]
g-a-system-sql-or-nosql/
iii. [Link]
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○ CAP Theorem, eventual consistency, BASE
i. [Link]
ii. [Link]
iii. [Link]
○ Design for partitioning, indexing, and sharding.
i. [Link]
do-it-right/
ii. [Link]
iii. [Link]
5. Load Management:
○ Load balancing techniques.
i. [Link]
ncing/
ii. [Link]
○ Rate limiting and throttling.
i. [Link]
ii. [Link]
Preparation Steps
1. Practice Use Cases:
○ Design solutions for common problems from practise interviews etc. (in resources
given below)
2. Understand Real-World Systems:
○ Read about architectures of popular systems (Netflix, Instagram, YouTube).
3. Visualize Solutions:
○ Practice drawing architecture diagrams using tools like Lucidchart or [Link].
Resources
● Grokking (This repo has a very comprehensive guide on how to approach HLD, and
also different resources for every key concept)
○ [Link]
● Key concepts (Excellent playlist covering everything in HLD)
○ [Link]
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● Books:
○ System Design Interview by Alex Xu.
○ Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann.
● Practise interview playlists:
○ [Link]
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○ [Link]
● Blogs:
○ [Link]
○ [Link]
○ [Link]
○ [Link]
○ [Link]
○ [Link]
○ [Link]
○ [Link]
NOTE:
For last minute practise go through Gaurav Sens youtube playlist for all of the key concepts,
then a system design practise interview from above playlists for each type of problems in
grokking repository.
2. Low-Level Design (LLD)
Key Areas to Focus On
1. Object-Oriented Design (OOD):
■ [Link]
○ Understand SOLID principles for maintainable code.
■ [Link]
irst-five-principles-of-object-oriented-design
■ [Link]
-with-real-life-examples/
■ [Link]
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○ Practice design patterns (Factory, Singleton, Builder, Strategy)
■ [Link]
■ [Link]
y-and-builder-317cb407c2e7
■ [Link]
design-pattern-in-java/
■ [Link]
■ [Link]
2. Class Design:
○ Break a problem into entities and relationships.
■ [Link]
■ [Link]
■ [Link]
ms
○ Ensure SRP (Single Responsibility Principle) is adhered to.
■ [Link]
le/
3. Code Modularity:
○ Write extensible and reusable code.
■ [Link]
[Link]
○ Use interfaces and abstract classes effectively.
■ [Link]
[Link]
4. Design for Concurrency:
○ Understand thread safety, synchronization, and race conditions.
■ [Link]
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20a%20single%20chip)
■ [Link]
■ [Link]
■ [Link]
■ [Link]
■ [Link]
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Resources
● Concepts:
○ [Link]
○ [Link]
n/
○ [Link]
oW
● Books:
○ Head First Design Patterns by Eric Freeman.
○ Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by GoF.
● Practice:
○ [Link] for practical LLD exercises.
○ Mock interviews on Pramp for LLD scenarios.
○ [Link]
oW
3. Interview Strategy
For High-Level Design (HLD):
1. Focus on the 4 S's:
○ Scalability: How does your design handle millions of users?
○ Simplicity: Keep the design straightforward and understandable.
○ Security: Incorporate authentication, authorization, and encryption.
○ Stability: Ensure fault tolerance and backup mechanisms.
2. Explain Trade-Offs:
○ Discuss why you chose a particular database, caching strategy, or architecture.
3. Think Big and Scale Later:
○ Start small and explain how the system can evolve with increased traffic.
For Low-Level Design (LLD):
1. Master Class and Relationship Design:
○ Think of entities and how they interact (e.g., inheritance or composition).
2. Follow a Methodical Approach:
○ Analyze the problem -> Identify classes -> Define methods and relationships.
3. Write Clean, Testable Code:
○ Stick to principles like DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) and KISS (Keep It Simple,
Stupid).
