System Design is the process of designing the architecture, components, and interfaces of a system to meet user and business requirements. It helps define how different parts of a system work together to build a reliable and scalable solution.
- System Design focuses on structuring a system to meet functional and non-functional requirements.
- It covers concepts from basic principles to advanced system architecture.
Importance of System Design
System Design helps in building software systems that are scalable, reliable, efficient, and maintainable.
- Scalability and Reliability: System design ensures systems can grow and handle increased demand without failure.
- Efficient Resource Management: It helps in optimizing resource allocation, ensuring fast and responsive applications.
- Adaptability: System design enables the creation of systems that can evolve with changing business needs, reducing long-term costs.
- Architectural Understanding: Learning different system architectures (e.g., microservices, monolithic) helps in building applications suited to various needs.
- Interview Preparation: Mastering system design is key to excelling in system design interviews, commonly asked in tech company hiring processes.
Basics
Core concepts to get started with system design.
High Level Design
High Level Design (HLD) focuses on the overall architecture, major components, and communication between them.
System Architectural Styles
Common architectural patterns used in system design.
- Monolithic Architecture
- Microservices
- Monolithic Vs Microservices Architecture
- Event-Driven Architecture
- Event-Driven Architecture in an E-commerce System
- Serverless Architecture
- Stateless and Stateful Systems
- Stateful Vs Stateless Architecture
- Pub/Sub Architecture
Scalability
Learn how systems handle increasing users, traffic, and data.
- Scalability in System Design
- Horizontal and Vertical Scaling
- Choosing the Right Scalability Approach
- Designing Highly Scalable Systems
- Primary Scalability Bottlenecks in System Design
Databases in Designing Systems
Learn how databases and storage systems are selected, designed, and scaled.
- Designing the Database
- Types of Database
- Choosing a Database - SQL or NoSQL
- File and Database Storage Systems
- Database Replication in System Design
- Types of Database Replication
- Database Sharding
- Data Partitioning
- Block, Object, and File Storage
- Normalization Process in DBMS
- SQL Query Optimization
- Denormalization in Databases
- Intro to Redis
Consistency, Availability, Reliability & Maintainability
Core system qualities that impact user experience and system health.
- Availability in System Design
- Achieving High Availability
- Consistency in System Design
- Consistency pattern
- CAP Theorem
- Reliability in System Design
- Fault Tolerance in System Design
- Maintainability
Load Balancing
Learn how incoming traffic is distributed across multiple servers.
- Load Balancer
- Types of Load Balancer
- Load Balancing Algorithms
- Concurrency and Parallelism
- Stateless Vs Stateful Load Balancing
- Load Balancing Vs Failover
- Consistent Hashing
Latency, Throughput and Caching
Learn techniques for improving system performance and reducing response time.
- Latency and Throughput
- Caching in System Design
- Distributed Cache
- Design Distributed Cache
- Edge Caching
- CDN Vs Edge Server
- Cache Eviction Policies
- Cold and Warm Cache in System Design
API Gateway, Message Queues & Rate Limiting
Focuses on orchestrating communication, queuing messages, and limiting traffic in scalable systems.
Protocols, CDN, Proxies & WebSockets
Networking, caching, and real-time communication fundamentals.
- Communication Protocols
- Domain Name System
- DNS Caching
- Flushing(Reset) of DNS Cache
- Time to Live(TTL)
- Content Delivery Network(CDN)
- Proxies in System Design
- Forward Proxy vs Reverse Proxy
- Web and Application Server
- Long Polling and Short PollingÂ
- Websockets
Event-Driven Architecture
Learn how systems communicate through events and asynchronous messaging.
- Introduction
- Event Sourcing Pattern
- Event Sourcing Vs Event Streaming
- Event-Driven APIs in Microservice Architectures
- Error Handling in Event-Driven Architecture
- Restore State in an Event-Based, Message-Driven Microservice Architecture on Failure Scenario
- Event-Driven Architecture Patterns in Cloud Native Applications
- Request-driven Vs Event-driven Microservices
- Event-Driven Architecture Vs Microservices Architecture
- Message-Driven Architecture Vs Event-Driven Architecture
Testing
Testing methods and deployment pipelines to build robust systems.
Security Measures
Learn common security mechanisms used to protect system resources and data.
- Security Measures in System Design
- Authentication and Authorization
- Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS)
- Secure Software Development Life Cycle (SSDLC)
- Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Distributed System Design
Explains consensus algorithms, tracing, and security considerations in distributed system design.
- Introduction
- Consensus Algorithms in Distributed System
- Distributed Tracing
- Secure Communication in Distributed System
- Design Issues of Distributed System
Cost & Performance Optimizations
Explains how to optimize system performance and estimate software costs effectively.
Low Level Design(LLD)
Low Level Design (LLD) focuses on the internal structure of a system, including classes, objects, interfaces, and their interactions.
Core Concepts
- Object-Oriented Programming(OOP) Concepts
- Modularity and Interfaces
- Low Level Design or LLD
- Difference between High Level Design(HLD) and Low Level Design(LLD)
Design Principles
UML
UML diagrams are used to visualize the structure and behavior of a system.
Design Patterns
Design patterns provide reusable solutions to common software design problems.
Interview Questions & Answers of System Design
Practice common system design problems and learn how to design scalable and efficient systems.
System Design Interview Preparation Guide
Learn how to approach and solve System Design questions in interviews.
