system-design-fundamentals

System Design Interview Overview

Source: educative.io

STEP 1: Requirements Clarifications

• Always get clarification on the scope of the design
• Clarify what is and is not needed
• If there is a user-facing component, clarify what the user can / cannot do

STEP 2: System Interface Definition

• Confirm what APIs will be needed

STEP 3: Back-of-the-enveloper Estmation

• Confirm how widely the application will have to scale
• This will help when making choices about storage, partitioning, load balancing and caching

STEP 4: Defining Data Model

• Design your tables and how they interact together
• This will help when choosing the DB you will need

STEP 5: High-level Design

• Draw a high-level block diagram
• E.g. Clients -> Load Balancer -> Servers

STEP 6: Detailed Design

• Dig deep into key components
• The conversation should guide where you should focus and dig deep
• We want to have multiple options, and we want to know the pros and cons / tradeoffs for our choices

STEP 7: Identifying and Resolving Bottlenecks

• Determine points of failure
• Determine backup plans for server outages
• Determine how you would mitigate system failure