域名系统是分层次的，一些 DNS 服务器位于顶层。当查询（域名） IP 时，路由或 ISP 提供连接 DNS 服务器的信息。较底层的 DNS 服务器缓存映射，它可能会因为 DNS 传播延时而失效。DNS 结果可以缓存在浏览器或操作系统中一段时间，时间长短取决于[存活时间 TTL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_live)。
四层负载均衡根据监看[传输层](#communication)的信息来决定如何分发请求。通常，这会涉及来源，目标 IP 地址和请求头中的端口，但不包括数据包（报文）内容。四层负载均衡执行[网络地址转换（NAT）](https://www.nginx.com/resources/glossary/layer-4-load-balancing/)来向上游服务器转发网络数据包。
A reverse proxy is a web server that centralizes internal services and provides unified interfaces to the public. Requests from clients are forwarded to a server that can fulfill it before the reverse proxy returns the server's response to the client.
Additional benefits include:
* **Increased security** - Hide information about backend servers, blacklist IPs, limit number of connections per client
* **Increased scalability and flexibility** - Clients only see the reverse proxy's IP, allowing you to scale servers or change their configuration
* **SSL termination** - Decrypt incoming requests and encrypt server responses so backend servers do not have to perform these potentially expensive operations
* Removes the need to install [X.509 certificates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509) on each server
* **Compression** - Compress server responses
* **Caching** - Return the response for cached requests
* Deploying a load balancer is useful when you have multiple servers. Often, load balancers route traffic to a set of servers serving the same function.
* Reverse proxies can be useful even with just one web server or application server, opening up the benefits described in the previous section.
* Solutions such as NGINX and HAProxy can support both layer 7 reverse proxying and load balancing.
### Disadvantage(s): reverse proxy
* Introducing a reverse proxy results in increased complexity.
* A single reverse proxy is a single point of failure, configuring multiple reverse proxies (ie a [failover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failover)) further increases complexity.
### Source(s) and further reading
* [Reverse proxy vs load balancer](https://www.nginx.com/resources/glossary/reverse-proxy-vs-load-balancer/)
<i><ahref=http://lethain.com/introduction-to-architecting-systems-for-scale/#platform_layer>Source: Intro to architecting systems for scale</a></i>
</p>
Separating out the web layer from the application layer (also known as platform layer) allows you to scale and configure both layers independently. Adding a new API results in adding application servers without necessarily adding additional web servers.
The **single responsibility principle** advocates for small and autonomous services that work together. Small teams with small services can plan more aggressively for rapid growth.
Workers in the application layer also help enable [asynchronism](#asynchronism).
### Microservices
Related to this discussion are [microservices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microservices), which can be described as a suite of independently deployable, small, modular services. Each service runs a unique process and communicates through a well-defined, lightweight mechanism to serve a business goal. <sup><ahref=https://smartbear.com/learn/api-design/what-are-microservices>1</a></sup>
Pinterest, for example, could have the following microservices: user profile, follower, feed, search, photo upload, etc.
### Service Discovery
Systems such as [Zookeeper](http://www.slideshare.net/sauravhaloi/introduction-to-apache-zookeeper) can help services find each other by keeping track of registered names, addresses, ports, etc.
### Disadvantage(s): application layer
* Adding an application layer with loosely coupled services requires a different approach from an architectural, operations, and process viewpoint (vs a monolithic system).
* Microservices can add complexity in terms of deployments and operations.
### Source(s) and further reading
* [Intro to architecting systems for scale](http://lethain.com/introduction-to-architecting-systems-for-scale)
* [Crack the system design interview](http://www.puncsky.com/blog/2016/02/14/crack-the-system-design-interview/)
* [Introduction to Zookeeper](http://www.slideshare.net/sauravhaloi/introduction-to-apache-zookeeper)
* [Here's what you need to know about building microservices](https://cloudncode.wordpress.com/2016/07/22/msa-getting-started/)
## Database
<palign="center">
<imgsrc="http://i.imgur.com/Xkm5CXz.png">
<br/>
<i><ahref=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg5onp8TU6Q>Source: Scaling up to your first 10 million users</a></i>
</p>
### Relational database management system (RDBMS)
A relational database like SQL is a collection of data items organized in tables.
**ACID** is a set of properties of relational database [transactions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_transaction).
* **Atomicity** - Each transaction is all or nothing
* **Consistency** - Any transaction will bring the database from one valid state to another
* **Isolation** - Executing transactions concurrently has the same results as if the transactions were executed serially
* **Durability** - Once a transaction has been committed, it will remain so
There are many techniques to scale a relational database: **master-slave replication**, **master-master replication**, **federation**, **sharding**, **denormalization**, and **SQL tuning**.
#### Master-slave replication
The master serves reads and writes, replicating writes to one or more slaves, which serve only reads. Slaves can also replicate to additional slaves in a tree-like fashion. If the master goes offline, the system can continue to operate in read-only mode until a slave is promoted to a master or a new master is provisioned.
* Additional logic is needed to promote a slave to a master.
* See [Disadvantage(s): replication](#disadvantages-replication) for points related to **both** master-slave and master-master.
#### Master-master replication
Both masters serve reads and writes and coordinate with each other on writes. If either master goes down, the system can continue to operate with both reads and writes.
* You'll need a load balancer or you'll need to make changes to your application logic to determine where to write.
* Most master-master systems are either loosely consistent (violating ACID) or have increased write latency due to synchronization.
* Conflict resolution comes more into play as more write nodes are added and as latency increases.
* See [Disadvantage(s): replication](#disadvantages-replication) for points related to **both** master-slave and master-master.
##### Disadvantage(s): replication
* There is a potential for loss of data if the master fails before any newly written data can be replicated to other nodes.
* Writes are replayed to the read replicas. If there are a lot of writes, the read replicas can get bogged down with replaying writes and can't do as many reads.
* The more read slaves, the more you have to replicate, which leads to greater replication lag.
* On some systems, writing to the master can spawn multiple threads to write in parallel, whereas read replicas only support writing sequentially with a single thread.
* Replication adds more hardware and additional complexity.
<i><ahref=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg5onp8TU6Q>Source: Scaling up to your first 10 million users</a></i>
</p>
Federation (or functional partitioning) splits up databases by function. For example, instead of a single, monolithic database, you could have three databases: **forums**, **users**, and **products**, resulting in less read and write traffic to each database and therefore less replication lag. Smaller databases result in more data that can fit in memory, which in turn results in more cache hits due to improved cache locality. With no single central master serializing writes you can write in parallel, increasing throughput.
##### Disadvantage(s): federation
* Federation is not effective if your schema requires huge functions or tables.
* You'll need to update your application logic to determine which database to read and write.
* Joining data from two databases is more complex with a [server link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5145637/querying-data-by-joining-two-tables-in-two-database-on-different-servers).
* Federation adds more hardware and additional complexity.
##### Source(s) and further reading: federation
* [Scaling up to your first 10 million users](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg5onp8TU6Q)
Sharding distributes data across different databases such that each database can only manage a subset of the data. Taking a users database as an example, as the number of users increases, more shards are added to the cluster.
Similar to the advantages of [federation](#federation), sharding results in less read and write traffic, less replication, and more cache hits. Index size is also reduced, which generally improves performance with faster queries. If one shard goes down, the other shards are still operational, although you'll want to add some form of replication to avoid data loss. Like federation, there is no single central master serializing writes, allowing you to write in parallel with increased throughput.
Common ways to shard a table of users is either through the user's last name initial or the user's geographic location.
##### Disadvantage(s): sharding
* You'll need to update your application logic to work with shards, which could result in complex SQL queries.
* Data distribution can become lopsided in a shard. For example, a set of power users on a shard could result in increased load to that shard compared to others.
* Rebalancing adds additional complexity. A sharding function based on [consistent hashing](http://www.paperplanes.de/2011/12/9/the-magic-of-consistent-hashing.html) can reduce the amount of transferred data.
* Joining data from multiple shards is more complex.
* Sharding adds more hardware and additional complexity.
##### Source(s) and further reading: sharding
* [The coming of the shard](http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/8/6/an-unorthodox-approach-to-database-design-the-coming-of-the.html)
Denormalization attempts to improve read performance at the expense of some write performance. Redundant copies of the data are written in multiple tables to avoid expensive joins. Some RDBMS such as [PostgreSQL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL) and Oracle support [materialized views](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialized_view) which handle the work of storing redundant information and keeping redundant copies consistent.
Once data becomes distributed with techniques such as [federation](#federation) and [sharding](#sharding), managing joins across data centers further increases complexity. Denormalization might circumvent the need for such complex joins.
In most systems, reads can heavily number writes 100:1 or even 1000:1. A read resulting in a complex database join can be very expensive, spending a significant amount of time on disk operations.
##### Disadvantage(s): denormalization
* Data is duplicated.
* Constraints can help redundant copies of information stay in sync, which increases complexity of the database design.
* A denormalized database under heavy write load might perform worse than its normalized counterpart.
###### Source(s) and further reading: denormalization
SQL tuning is a broad topic and many [books](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sql+tuning) have been written as reference.
It's important to **benchmark** and **profile** to simulate and uncover bottlenecks.
* **Benchmark** - Simulate high-load situations with tools such as [ab](http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/programs/ab.html).
* **Profile** - Enable tools such as the [slow query log](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/slow-query-log.html) to help track performance issues.
Benchmarking and profiling might point you to the following optimizations.
##### Tighten up the schema
* MySQL dumps to disk in contiguous blocks for fast access.
* Use `CHAR` instead of `VARCHAR` for fixed-length fields.
*`CHAR` effectively allows for fast, random access, whereas with `VARCHAR`, you must find the end of a string before moving onto the next one.
* Use `TEXT` for large blocks of text such as blog posts. `TEXT` also allows for boolean searches. Using a `TEXT` field results in storing a pointer on disk that is used to locate the text block.
* Use `INT` for larger numbers up to 2^32 or 4 billion.
* Use `DECIMAL` for currency to avoid floating point representation errors.
* Avoid storing large `BLOBS`, store the location of where to get the object instead.
*`VARCHAR(255)` is the largest number of characters that can be counted in an 8 bit number, often maximizing the use of a byte in some RDBMS.
* Set the `NOT NULL` constraint where applicable to [improve search performance](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1017239/how-do-null-values-affect-performance-in-a-database-search).
##### Use good indices
* Columns that you are querying (`SELECT`, `GROUP BY`, `ORDER BY`, `JOIN`) could be faster with indices.
* Indices are usually represented as self-balancing [B-tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-tree) that keeps data sorted and allows searches, sequential access, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic time.
* Placing an index can keep the data in memory, requiring more space.
* Writes could also be slower since the index also needs to be updated.
* When loading large amounts of data, it might be faster to disable indices, load the data, then rebuild the indices.
##### Avoid expensive joins
* [Denormalize](#denormalization) where performance demands it.
##### Partition tables
* Break up a table by putting hot spots in a separate table to help keep it in memory.
##### Tune the query cache
* In some cases, the [query cache](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/query-cache) could lead to [performance issues](https://www.percona.com/blog/2014/01/28/10-mysql-performance-tuning-settings-after-installation/).
##### Source(s) and further reading: SQL tuning
* [Tips for optimizing MySQL queries](http://20bits.com/article/10-tips-for-optimizing-mysql-queries-that-dont-suck)
* [Is there a good reason i see VARCHAR(255) used so often?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1217466/is-there-a-good-reason-i-see-varchar255-used-so-often-as-opposed-to-another-l)
* [How do null values affect performance?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1017239/how-do-null-values-affect-performance-in-a-database-search)
NoSQL is a collection of data items represented in a **key-value store**, **document-store**, **wide column store**, or a **graph database**. Data is denormalized, and joins are generally done in the application code. Most NoSQL stores lack true ACID transactions and favor [eventual consistency](#eventual-consistency).
**BASE** is often used to describe the properties of NoSQL databases. In comparison with the [CAP Theorem](#cap-theorem), BASE chooses availability over consistency.
* **Basically available** - the system guarantees availability.
* **Soft state** - the state of the system may change over time, even without input.
* **Eventual consistency** - the system will become consistent over a period of time, given that the system doesn't receive input during that period.
In addition to choosing between [SQL or NoSQL](#sql-or-nosql), it is helpful to understand which type of NoSQL database best fits your use case(s). We'll review **key-value stores**, **document-stores**, **wide column stores**, and **graph databases** in the next section.
#### Key-value store
> Abstraction: hash table
A key-value store generally allows for O(1) reads and writes and is often backed by memory or SSD. Data stores can maintain keys in [lexicographic order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicographical_order), allowing efficient retrieval of key ranges. Key-value stores can allow for storing of metadata with a value.
Key-value stores provide high performance and are often used for simple data models or for rapidly-changing data, such as an in-memory cache layer. Since they offer only a limited set of operations, complexity is shifted to the application layer if additional operations are needed.
A key-value store is the basis for more complex systems such as a document store, and in some cases, a graph database.
##### Source(s) and further reading: key-value store
* [Disadvantages of key-value stores](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4056093/what-are-the-disadvantages-of-using-a-key-value-table-over-nullable-columns-or)
> Abstraction: key-value store with documents stored as values
A document store is centered around documents (XML, JSON, binary, etc), where a document stores all information for a given object. Document stores provide APIs or a query language to query based on the internal structure of the document itself. *Note, many key-value stores include features for working with a value's metadata, blurring the lines between these two storage types.*
Based on the underlying implementation, documents are organized in either collections, tags, metadata, or directories. Although documents can be organized or grouped together, documents may have fields that are completely different from each other.
Some document stores like [MongoDB](https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-architecture) and [CouchDB](https://blog.couchdb.org/2016/08/01/couchdb-2-0-architecture/) also provide a SQL-like language to perform complex queries. [DynamoDB](http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/class/cs239-w08/decandia07dynamo.pdf) supports both key-values and documents.
Document stores provide high flexibility and are often used for working with occasionally changing data.
##### Source(s) and further reading: document store
A wide column store's basic unit of data is a column (name/value pair). A column can be grouped in column families (analogous to a SQL table). Super column families further group column families. You can access each column independently with a row key, and columns with the same row key form a row. Each value contains a timestamp for versioning and for conflict resolution.
Google introduced [Bigtable](http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/class/cs239-w08/chang06bigtable.pdf) as the first wide column store, which influenced the open-source [HBase](https://www.mapr.com/blog/in-depth-look-hbase-architecture) often-used in the Hadoop ecosystem, and [Cassandra](http://docs.datastax.com/en/archived/cassandra/2.0/cassandra/architecture/architectureIntro_c.html) from Facebook. Stores such as BigTable, HBase, and Cassandra maintain keys in lexicographic order, allowing efficient retrieval of selective key ranges.
Wide column stores offer high availability and high scalability. They are often used for very large data sets.
##### Source(s) and further reading: wide column store
* [SQL & NoSQL, a brief history](http://blog.grio.com/2015/11/sql-nosql-a-brief-history.html)
In a graph database, each node is a record and each arc is a relationship between two nodes. Graph databases are optimized to represent complex relationships with many foreign keys or many-to-many relationships.
Graphs databases offer high performance for data models with complex relationships, such as a social network. They are relatively new and are not yet widely-used; it might be more difficult to find development tools and resources. Many graphs can only be accessed with [REST APIs](#representational-state-transfer-rest).
<i><ahref=http://www.slideshare.net/tmatyashovsky/from-cache-to-in-memory-data-grid-introduction-to-hazelcast>Source: From cache to in-memory data grid</a></i>
<i><ahref=http://www.slideshare.net/tmatyashovsky/from-cache-to-in-memory-data-grid-introduction-to-hazelcast>Source: From cache to in-memory data grid</a></i>
<i><ahref=http://www.wildbunny.co.uk/blog/2012/10/09/how-to-make-a-multi-player-game-part-1/>Source: How to make a multiplayer game</a></i>
</p>
UDP is connectionless. Datagrams (analogous to packets) are guaranteed only at the datagram level. Datagrams might reach their destination out of order or not at all. UDP does not support congestion control. Without the guarantees that TCP support, UDP is generally more efficient.
UDP can broadcast, sending datagrams to all devices on the subnet. This is useful with [DHCP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Host_Configuration_Protocol) because the client has not yet received an IP address, thus preventing a way for TCP to stream without the IP address.
UDP is less reliable but works well in real time use cases such as VoIP, video chat, streaming, and realtime multiplayer games.
Use UDP over TCP when:
* You need the lowest latency
* Late data is worse than loss of data
* You want to implement your own error correction
#### Source(s) and further reading: TCP and UDP
* [Networking for game programming](http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/udp-vs-tcp/)
* [Key differences between TCP and UDP protocols](http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/key-differences-between-tcp-and-udp-protocols/)
* [Difference between TCP and UDP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5970383/difference-between-tcp-and-udp)
* [Transmission control protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol)
* [Scaling memcache at Facebook](http://www.cs.bu.edu/~jappavoo/jappavoo.github.com/451/papers/memcache-fb.pdf)
### Remote procedure call (RPC)
<palign="center">
<imgsrc="http://i.imgur.com/iF4Mkb5.png">
<br/>
<i><ahref=http://www.puncsky.com/blog/2016/02/14/crack-the-system-design-interview/>Source: Crack the system design interview</a></i>
</p>
In an RPC, a client causes a procedure to execute on a different address space, usually a remote server. The procedure is coded as if it were a local procedure call, abstracting away the details of how to communicate with the server from the client program. Remote calls are usually slower and less reliable than local calls so it is helpful to distinguish RPC calls from local calls. Popular RPC frameworks include [Protobuf](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/), [Thrift](https://thrift.apache.org/), and [Avro](https://avro.apache.org/docs/current/).
RPC is a request-response protocol:
* **Client program** - Calls the client stub procedure. The parameters are pushed onto the stack like a local procedure call.
* **Client stub procedure** - Marshals (packs) procedure id and arguments into a request message.
* **Client communication module** - OS sends the message from the client to the server.
* **Server communication module** - OS passes the incoming packets to the server stub procedure.
* **Server stub procedure** - Unmarshalls the results, calls the server procedure matching the procedure id and passes the given arguments.
* The server response repeats the steps above in reverse order.
Sample RPC calls:
```
GET /someoperation?data=anId
POST /anotheroperation
{
"data":"anId";
"anotherdata": "another value"
}
```
RPC is focused on exposing behaviors. RPCs are often used for performance reasons with internal communications, as you can hand-craft native calls to better fit your use cases.
Choose a Native Library aka SDK when:
* You know your target platform.
* You want to control how your "logic" is accessed
* You want to control how error control happens off your library
* Performance and end user experience is your primary concern
HTTP APIs following **REST** tend to be used more often for public APIs.
#### Disadvantage(s): RPC
* RPC clients become tightly coupled to the service implementation.
* A new API must be defined for every new operation or use case.
* It can be difficult to debug RPC.
* You might not be able to leverage existing technologies out of the box. For example, it might require additional effort to ensure [RPC calls are properly cached](http://etherealbits.com/2012/12/debunking-the-myths-of-rpc-rest/) on caching servers such as [Squid](http://www.squid-cache.org/).
### Representational state transfer (REST)
REST is an architectural style enforcing a client/server model where the client acts on a set of resources managed by the server. The server provides a representation of resources and actions that can either manipulate or get a new representation of resources. All communication must be stateless and cacheable.
There are four qualities of a RESTful interface:
* **Identify resources (URI in HTTP)** - use the same URI regardless of any operation.
* **Change with representations (Verbs in HTTP)** - use verbs, headers, and body.
* **Self-descriptive error message (status response in HTTP)** - Use status codes, don't reinvent the wheel.
* **[HATEOAS](http://restcookbook.com/Basics/hateoas/) (HTML interface for HTTP)** - your web service should be fully accessible in a browser.
Sample REST calls:
```
GET /someresources/anId
PUT /someresources/anId
{"anotherdata": "another value"}
```
REST is focused on exposing data. It minimizes the coupling between client/server and is often used for public HTTP APIs. REST uses a more generic and uniform method of exposing resources through URIs, [representation through headers](https://github.com/for-GET/know-your-http-well/blob/master/headers.md), and actions through verbs such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH. Being stateless, REST is great for horizontal scaling and partitioning.
#### Disadvantage(s): REST
* With REST being focused on exposing data, it might not be a good fit if resources are not naturally organized or accessed in a simple hierarchy. For example, returning all updated records from the past hour matching a particular set of events is not easily expressed as a path. With REST, it is likely to be implemented with a combination of URI path, query parameters, and possibly the request body.
* REST typically relies on a few verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH) which sometimes doesn't fit your use case. For example, moving expired documents to the archive folder might not cleanly fit within these verbs.
* Fetching complicated resources with nested hierarchies requires multiple round trips between the client and server to render single views, e.g. fetching content of a blog entry and the comments on that entry. For mobile applications operating in variable network conditions, these multiple roundtrips are highly undesirable.
* Over time, more fields might be added to an API response and older clients will receive all new data fields, even those that they do not need, as a result, it bloats the payload size and leads to larger latencies.
* [Why REST for internal use and not RPC](http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1190508)
## Security
This section could use some updates. Consider [contributing](#contributing)!
Security is a broad topic. Unless you have considerable experience, a security background, or are applying for a position that requires knowledge of security, you probably won't need to know more than the basics:
* Encrypt in transit and at rest.
* Sanitize all user inputs or any input parameters exposed to user to prevent [XSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting) and [SQL injection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_injection).
* Use parameterized queries to prevent SQL injection.
* Use the principle of [least privilege](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege).
### Source(s) and further reading
* [Security guide for developers](https://github.com/FallibleInc/security-guide-for-developers)
* [OWASP top ten](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Top_Ten_Cheat_Sheet)
## Appendix
You'll sometimes be asked to do 'back-of-the-envelope' estimates. For example, you might need to determine how long it will take to generate 100 image thumbnails from disk or how much memory a data structure will take. The **Powers of two table** and **Latency numbers every programmer should know** are handy references.
* [Latency numbers every programmer should know - 1](https://gist.github.com/jboner/2841832)
* [Latency numbers every programmer should know - 2](https://gist.github.com/hellerbarde/2843375)
* [Designs, lessons, and advice from building large distributed systems](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/ladis2009/talks/dean-keynote-ladis2009.pdf)
* [Software Engineering Advice from Building Large-Scale Distributed Systems](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//people/jeff/stanford-295-talk.pdf)
### Additional system design interview questions
> Common system design interview questions, with links to resources on how to solve each.
| Design a file sync service like Dropbox | [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE4gwstWhmc) |
| Design a search engine like Google | [queue.acm.org](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=988407)<br/>[stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38324/interview-question-how-would-you-implement-google-search)<br/>[ardendertat.com](http://www.ardendertat.com/2012/01/11/implementing-search-engines/)<br>[stanford.edu](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html) |
| Design a recommendation system like Amazon's | [hulu.com](http://tech.hulu.com/blog/2011/09/19/recommendation-system.html)<br/>[ijcai13.org](http://ijcai13.org/files/tutorial_slides/td3.pdf) |
| Design a chat app like WhatsApp | [highscalability.com](http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/26/the-whatsapp-architecture-facebook-bought-for-19-billion.html)
| Design a picture sharing system like Instagram | [highscalability.com](http://highscalability.com/flickr-architecture)<br/>[highscalability.com](http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/12/6/instagram-architecture-14-million-users-terabytes-of-photos.html) |
| Design the Facebook news feed function | [quora.com](http://www.quora.com/What-are-best-practices-for-building-something-like-a-News-Feed)<br/>[quora.com](http://www.quora.com/Activity-Streams/What-are-the-scaling-issues-to-keep-in-mind-while-developing-a-social-network-feed)<br/>[slideshare.net](http://www.slideshare.net/danmckinley/etsy-activity-feeds-architecture) |
| Design the Facebook timeline function | [facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150468255628920)<br/>[highscalability.com](http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/1/23/facebook-timeline-brought-to-you-by-the-power-of-denormaliza.html) |
| Design the Facebook chat function | [erlang-factory.com](http://www.erlang-factory.com/upload/presentations/31/EugeneLetuchy-ErlangatFacebook.pdf)<br/>[facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=14218138919&id=9445547199&index=0) |
| Design a graph search function like Facebook's | [facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood-building-out-the-infrastructure-for-graph-search/10151347573598920)<br/>[facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood-indexing-and-ranking-in-graph-search/10151361720763920)<br/>[facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood-the-natural-language-interface-of-graph-search/10151432733048920) |
| Design a content delivery network like CloudFlare | [cmu.edu](http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2112&context=compsci) |
| Design a trending topic system like Twitter's | [michael-noll.com](http://www.michael-noll.com/blog/2013/01/18/implementing-real-time-trending-topics-in-storm/)<br/>[snikolov .wordpress.com](http://snikolov.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/early-detection-of-twitter-trends/) |
| Design a random ID generation system | [blog.twitter.com](https://blog.twitter.com/2010/announcing-snowflake)<br/>[github.com](https://github.com/twitter/snowflake/) |
| Return the top k requests during a time interval | [ucsb.edu](https://icmi.cs.ucsb.edu/research/tech_reports/reports/2005-23.pdf)<br/>[wpi.edu](http://davis.wpi.edu/xmdv/docs/EDBT11-diyang.pdf) |
| Design a system that serves data from multiple data centers | [highscalability.com](http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/8/24/how-google-serves-data-from-multiple-datacenters.html) |
| Design an online multiplayer card game | [indieflashblog.com](http://www.indieflashblog.com/how-to-create-an-asynchronous-multiplayer-game.html)<br/>[buildnewgames.com](http://buildnewgames.com/real-time-multiplayer/) |
| Design a garbage collection system | [stuffwithstuff.com](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/12/08/babys-first-garbage-collector/)<br/>[washington.edu](http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep521/07wi/prj/rick.pdf) |
| Add a system design question | [Contribute](#contributing) |
### Real world architectures
> Articles on how real world systems are designed.
<palign="center">
<imgsrc="http://i.imgur.com/TcUo2fw.png">
<br/>
<i><ahref=https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Twitter-Timeline-Scalability>Source: Twitter timelines at scale</a></i>
</p>
**Don't focus on nitty gritty details for the following articles, instead:**
* Identify shared principles, common technologies, and patterns within these articles
* Study what problems are solved by each component, where it works, where it doesn't
| Data processing | **MapReduce** - Distributed data processing from Google | [research.google.com](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/zh-CN/us/archive/mapreduce-osdi04.pdf) |
| Data processing | **Spark** - Distributed data processing from Databricks | [slideshare.net](http://www.slideshare.net/AGrishchenko/apache-spark-architecture) |
| Data processing | **Storm** - Distributed data processing from Twitter | [slideshare.net](http://www.slideshare.net/previa/storm-16094009) |
| Data store | **Bigtable** - Distributed column-oriented database from Google | [harvard.edu](http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/class/cs239-w08/chang06bigtable.pdf) |
| Data store | **HBase** - Open source implementation of Bigtable | [slideshare.net](http://www.slideshare.net/alexbaranau/intro-to-hbase) |
| Data store | **Cassandra** - Distributed column-oriented database from Facebook | [slideshare.net](http://www.slideshare.net/planetcassandra/cassandra-introduction-features-30103666)
| Data store | **DynamoDB** - Document-oriented database from Amazon | [harvard.edu](http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/class/cs239-w08/decandia07dynamo.pdf) |
| Data store | **MongoDB** - Document-oriented database | [slideshare.net](http://www.slideshare.net/mdirolf/introduction-to-mongodb) |
| Data store | **Spanner** - Globally-distributed database from Google | [research.google.com](http://research.google.com/archive/spanner-osdi2012.pdf) |
| Data store | **Memcached** - Distributed memory caching system | [slideshare.net](http://www.slideshare.net/oemebamo/introduction-to-memcached) |
| Data store | **Redis** - Distributed memory caching system with persistence and value types | [slideshare.net](http://www.slideshare.net/dvirsky/introduction-to-redis) |
| | | |
| File system | **Google File System (GFS)** - Distributed file system | [research.google.com](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/zh-CN/us/archive/gfs-sosp2003.pdf) |
| File system | **Hadoop File System (HDFS)** - Open source implementation of GFS | [apache.org](https://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r1.2.1/hdfs_design.html) |
| | | |
| Misc | **Chubby** - Lock service for loosely-coupled distributed systems from Google | [research.google.com](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/chubby-osdi06.pdf) |
| ESPN | [Operating At 100,000 duh nuh nuhs per second](http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/11/4/espns-architecture-at-scale-operating-at-100000-duh-nuh-nuhs.html) |
| Google | [Google architecture](http://highscalability.com/google-architecture) |
| Instagram | [14 million users, terabytes of photos](http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/12/6/instagram-architecture-14-million-users-terabytes-of-photos.html)<br/>[What powers Instagram](http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/13649370142/what-powers-instagram-hundreds-of-instances) |
| Justin.tv | [Justin.Tv's live video broadcasting architecture](http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/3/16/justintvs-live-video-broadcasting-architecture.html) |
| Facebook | [Scaling memcached at Facebook](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~brecht/courses/854-Emerging-2014/readings/key-value/fb-memcached-nsdi-2013.pdf)<br/>[TAO: Facebook’s distributed data store for the social graph](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~brecht/courses/854-Emerging-2014/readings/data-store/tao-facebook-distributed-datastore-atc-2013.pdf)<br/>[Facebook’s photo storage](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/osdi10/tech/full_papers/Beaver.pdf) |
| Mailbox | [From 0 to one million users in 6 weeks](http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/6/18/scaling-mailbox-from-0-to-one-million-users-in-6-weeks-and-1.html) |
| Pinterest | [From 0 To 10s of billions of page views a month](http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/4/15/scaling-pinterest-from-0-to-10s-of-billions-of-page-views-a.html)<br/>[18 million visitors, 10x growth, 12 employees](http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/5/21/pinterest-architecture-update-18-million-visitors-10x-growth.html) |
| Playfish | [50 million monthly users and growing](http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/9/21/playfishs-social-gaming-architecture-50-million-monthly-user.html) |
| Tumblr | [15 billion page views a month](http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/2/13/tumblr-architecture-15-billion-page-views-a-month-and-harder.html) |
| Twitter | [Making Twitter 10000 percent faster](http://highscalability.com/scaling-twitter-making-twitter-10000-percent-faster)<br/>[Storing 250 million tweets a day using MySQL](http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/12/19/how-twitter-stores-250-million-tweets-a-day-using-mysql.html)<br/>[150M active users, 300K QPS, a 22 MB/S firehose](http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-twitter-uses-to-deal-with-150m-active-users.html)<br/>[Timelines at scale](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Twitter-Timeline-Scalability)<br/>[Big and small data at Twitter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cKTP36HVgI)<br/>[Operations at Twitter: scaling beyond 100 million users](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8LU0Cj6BOU) |
