System Design Flashcards
Can you describe the architecture of a scalable build system capable of handling thousands of concurrent builds?
I would design a build system with distributed build agents, parallelized processing, and caching mechanisms to optimize build times and resource utilization. It would incorporate features like dependency resolution, incremental builds, and dynamic resource allocation to scale horizontally and accommodate increasing demand.
How would you architect a system for managing software dependencies and package versions across multiple projects and teams?
I would design a dependency management system with dependency resolution, version control, and artifact repositories to ensure consistency, reproducibility, and compatibility across projects and environments. It would support features like version pinning, semantic versioning, and dependency analysis to minimize conflicts and facilitate dependency upgrades.
How would you design a scalable infrastructure for hosting developer tools and services, such as IDEs, code repositories, and collaboration platforms?
I would architect a cloud-native infrastructure using containerization technologies like Docker and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes to provide scalability, high availability, and resource isolation for developer tools and services. It would incorporate features like auto-scaling, load balancing, and service discovery to ensure optimal performance and reliability.
Can you discuss your approach to designing a logging and monitoring system for tracking developer productivity metrics and identifying performance bottlenecks?
I would design a logging and monitoring system with centralized log aggregation, real-time analytics, and customizable dashboards to track developer activities, system performance, and productivity metrics. It would integrate with development tools, version control systems, and issue trackers to correlate events and identify areas for improvement.
How would you architect a system for managing technical debt and code quality improvements across multiple projects and teams?
I would design a technical debt management system with debt tracking, prioritization, and remediation workflows to address code quality issues proactively. It would integrate with code analysis tools, issue trackers, and CI/CD pipelines to identify, quantify, and resolve technical debt across the software development lifecycle.
What is the CAP theorem, and how does it impact the design of distributed systems?
The CAP theorem states that in a distributed system, it is impossible to simultaneously guarantee consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. This means that in the event of a network partition (split-brain scenario), a distributed system must choose between maintaining consistency or availability. Designing distributed systems involves making trade-offs between these three properties based on application requirements.
Can you explain the differences between strong consistency and eventual consistency in distributed systems?
Strong consistency guarantees that all nodes in a distributed system have the same view of data at any given time, even in the presence of concurrent updates. Eventual consistency allows nodes to diverge temporarily but ensures that they will converge to the same state eventually, without violating causality.
How does sharding contribute to scalability in distributed databases?
Sharding involves partitioning data across multiple nodes in a distributed database. By distributing data horizontally, each node is responsible for a subset of the data, which allows the system to handle larger datasets and higher throughput. Sharding improves scalability by distributing the workload across multiple nodes.
What is the difference between horizontal scaling and vertical scaling in the context of distributed systems?
Horizontal scaling involves adding more machines or nodes to a distributed system to handle increased load, while vertical scaling involves upgrading existing machines with more powerful hardware. Horizontal scaling typically offers better scalability and fault tolerance since it allows the system to grow incrementally by adding commodity hardware.
How does replication contribute to fault tolerance and reliability in distributed systems?
Replication involves maintaining multiple copies of data across different nodes in a distributed system. By replicating data, the system can tolerate node failures and ensure high availability by serving requests from other replicas. Replication also improves read performance by allowing clients to read from nearby replicas.
Can you explain the differences between synchronous and asynchronous replication in distributed databases?
Synchronous replication requires acknowledgment from multiple replicas before acknowledging a write operation, ensuring that data is consistent across replicas but introducing latency. Asynchronous replication acknowledges write operations immediately and replicates data asynchronously, which can lead to temporary inconsistencies but offers lower latency.
How does the use of consistent hashing contribute to load balancing in distributed systems?
Consistent hashing ensures that data is distributed evenly across a set of nodes in a distributed system, which helps balance the load among nodes. By mapping keys to nodes in a consistent manner, consistent hashing minimizes the amount of data that needs to be moved when nodes are added or removed from the system, making it suitable for dynamic environments.
What is the role of a content delivery network (CDN) in distributed systems, and how does it improve performance and availability for web applications?
A content delivery network (CDN) is a distributed network of servers that deliver web content to users based on their geographic location. By caching content closer to end-users, CDNs reduce latency, improve load times, and offload traffic from origin servers, enhancing performance and availability for web applications.
Explain the role of TCP/IP in computer networking.
TCP/IP is a suite of protocols that governs how data is transmitted over networks. It ensures reliable and ordered delivery of data packets, handles addressing, routing, and error detection, forming the foundation of internet communication.
What is the Domain Name System (DNS), and how does it facilitate website navigation?
DNS translates domain names to IP addresses, enabling computers to locate resources on the internet. When a domain is queried, DNS servers provide the corresponding IP address, allowing browsers to connect to the requested website.
