Overview: System Design

Shoutout – https://paperdraw.dev (System Design w/ simulations)

System Design ain’t about developing features or writing code, it’s about managing trade-offs between speed, reliability, and cost. Below is the “index” of topics required to navigate top-tier architecture discussions.

1. The Storage Layer: Beyond CRUD

Understanding how data is physically stored determines how your system scales.

• B-Trees vs. LSM-Trees: The fundamental trade-off between Read-optimization (SQL) and Write-optimization (NoSQL).
• Storage Paradigms: When to use Relational (ACID compliance), Document (flexible schema), Key-Value (low latency), or Graph (complex relationships).

2. Distributed Communication

How services talk to each other defines the user experience and system resilience.

• Synchronous Patterns: REST, GraphQL, and gRPC. Knowing when “instant” overhead is acceptable.
• Asynchronous Patterns: Message Queues (RabbitMQ) and Pub/Sub (Kafka). Decoupling systems to handle traffic spikes.

3. Scalability & Traffic Management

Moving from one server to thousands.

• Load Balancing: Layer 4 vs. Layer 7 balancing and health check strategies.
• Caching Strategies: Content Delivery Networks (CDN) for the edge, and Distributed Caches (Redis) for the application layer.
• Database Partitioning: Vertical vs. Horizontal scaling (Sharding) and the complexity of re-balancing data.

4. The Constraints: CAP & Consistency

In a distributed world, you cannot have everything.

• The CAP Theorem: Choosing between Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance.
• Consistency Models: Strong consistency (Banking) vs. Eventual consistency (Social Media).

5. Resilience & Observability

Building systems that can fail gracefully.

• Redundancy: Data replication and multi-region deployments.
• Fault Tolerance: Circuit breakers and rate limiting to prevent “cascading failures.”

Master these.