System Design Interview
ProThe exact sequence to prepare for a system design interview: fundamentals first, then the building blocks interviewers expect you to reason about — load balancing, consistent hashing, the CAP theorem, and database indexing.
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1
System Design Basics
Learn the fundamental principles behind building large-scale, reliable systems: scalability, availability, latency, and the key trade-offs that drive real-world architecture decisions.
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2
Load Balancing
Understand how load balancers work, the algorithms they use (round-robin, least-connections, IP hash), Layer 4 vs Layer 7 differences, and how to design systems that stay healthy when servers fail.
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3
Consistent Hashing
Understand the hash ring, virtual nodes, and why consistent hashing is the foundation of distributed caches (Redis Cluster, Memcached), distributed databases (Cassandra, DynamoDB), and CDN request routing.
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4
The CAP Theorem
Understand why distributed systems can only guarantee two of Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance — and how real-world databases (Cassandra, Zookeeper, DynamoDB, Postgres) navigate this fundamental constraint.
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5
Database Indexing
Learn how B-tree and hash indexes work internally, how the query planner uses them, when to create composite and covering indexes, and how to diagnose slow queries using EXPLAIN ANALYZE.
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