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System Design Kickstart

The document outlines a systematic approach to tackling system design interview questions, emphasizing the importance of clarifying requirements, defining scope, and considering both functional and non-functional aspects. It details key architectural flows for various applications, such as URL shorteners and real-time chat apps, along with common components like load balancers and message queues. Additionally, it provides pro tips for effective communication during interviews, including the use of diagrams and discussing trade-offs.

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piyush bansal
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69 views3 pages

System Design Kickstart

The document outlines a systematic approach to tackling system design interview questions, emphasizing the importance of clarifying requirements, defining scope, and considering both functional and non-functional aspects. It details key architectural flows for various applications, such as URL shorteners and real-time chat apps, along with common components like load balancers and message queues. Additionally, it provides pro tips for effective communication during interviews, including the use of diagrams and discussing trade-offs.

Uploaded by

piyush bansal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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System Design Interview Kickstart: Architecture Flows & Fundamentals

1. Approach to System Design Questions

Step-by-Step Framework

1. Clarify Requirements
2. Functional: What should the system do?
3. Non-functional: Scale, availability, latency, etc.

4. Constraints: Users, QPS, storage, etc.

5. Define Scope

6. MVP first, then extended features (e.g., for a chat app: text messaging before voice/video)

7. High-Level Architecture

8. Components involved: Client, Load Balancer, Application Servers, Database, Cache, etc.

9. Component Design

10. APIs, databases, messaging queues, file storage

11. Bottlenecks & Trade-offs

12. Partitioning, sharding, eventual consistency, CAP theorem

13. Scaling Strategies

14. Load balancing, caching, database sharding, rate limiting, CDN

15. Failure Handling & Observability

16. Redundancy, retries, monitoring, alerts, logging

2. Key Architectural Flows

2.1 URL Shortener (e.g., Bitly)

Components: - Client - Load Balancer - Application Server - Cache (Redis) - Relational DB (e.g., MySQL)

1
Flow: 1. Client sends long URL to service. 2. Server validates and generates short hash (base62 of auto-
increment or UUID). 3. Store mapping in DB, and optionally cache. 4. On access, lookup hash in cache ->
fallback to DB.

2.2 Real-time Chat App

Components: - Mobile/Web Client - WebSocket Gateway - Message Broker (Kafka/RabbitMQ) - Chat Service -
Database (MongoDB/Cassandra)

Flow: 1. Client connects via WebSocket. 2. Messages are pushed to the broker. 3. Consumers write to DB
and broadcast to other clients. 4. Offline messages stored in DB.

2.3 Rate Limiter

Approaches: Token Bucket / Leaky Bucket / Sliding Window Architecture: - API Gateway with rate limiting
middleware (Redis-based)

Flow (Sliding Window): 1. On request, check Redis for user timestamps. 2. If within limit, allow and store
timestamp. 3. Else, reject with 429.

3. Common Components Explained

Load Balancer

• Evenly distributes traffic (Round Robin, Least Connections, etc.)


• Health checks for upstream servers

Cache (Redis/Memcached)

• Reduces DB load, serves frequent reads


• Use TTL for expiring data

Message Queue (Kafka, RabbitMQ)

• Async processing, decoupling services


• Ensures durability and ordering (Kafka)

Database Scaling

• Vertical: Add resources to server


• Horizontal: Partition/shard data
• Read replicas for load

CDN (Content Delivery Network)

• Edge servers cache static content


• Reduces latency for global users

2
4. Pro Tips
• Always define traffic & scale: QPS, DAUs, data size
• Use diagrams to show flows
• Talk through trade-offs and constraints
• Practice common questions: YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.

Let me know if you want architecture diagrams visualized or topics like data partitioning, consistency
trade-offs, or microservices vs monolith added next.

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