System Design Interview Cheat Sheet
Step 1: Clarify Requirements
Ask about scale, users, read/write ratio, and consistency requirements.
Step 2: High-Level Design
Draw the major components: clients, load balancers, API servers, databases, caches.
Step 3: Deep Dive
Pick 2-3 components and explain your choices. Discuss trade-offs.
Key Concepts to Know
- Load Balancing: Round robin, least connections, consistent hashing
- Caching: Redis/Memcached, cache invalidation strategies
- Database: SQL vs NoSQL, sharding, replication
- Message Queues: Kafka, RabbitMQ for async processing