Master the core building blocks of system design. Learn horizontal vs vertical scaling, load balancing, and everything you need to ace your next engineering interview.
System design is the process of defining the architecture, components, and data flow of a system to satisfy specified requirements. It bridges the gap between requirements and implementation.
The ability of a system to handle increased load by adding resources.
A reliable system continues to work correctly even when things go wrong (hardware faults, software bugs, human errors).
The percentage of time a system is operational. Measured as uptime: 99.9% = ~8.7 hours downtime/year.
| Component | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Load Balancer | Distribute traffic across servers |
| Cache | Reduce latency, offload DB |
| Database | Persist data |
| Message Queue | Async communication |
| CDN | Serve static assets fast |
Once you understand these fundamentals, explore: