System Design Core Concepts
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Scalability & Performance
Back-of-the-envelope calculations
Mid
Describe the role of load balancing in cloud architecture and its types.
Mid
Explain Latency vs. Throughput
Junior
Explain the differences between horizontal and vertical scaling. When would you use each?
Junior
Explain the purpose of load balancing algorithms in a network and provide examples of different load balancing algorithms.
Mid
What is latency in networking, and how does it affect network performance?
Mid
Databases & Data Management
Describe B-Trees and LSM Trees.
Senior
Describe batch processing and stream processing.
Senior
Describe range-based vs. hash-based partitioning.
Senior
Explain database replication, its use cases, and its types.
Senior
Explain database sharding and its benefits in managing large-scale databases.
Mid
Explain SQL normalization and denormalization.
Mid
Explain the ACID properties in the context of database transactions.
Junior
Explain the BASE acronym in NoSQL databases.
Junior
Explain the concept of consistent hashing in the context of distributed NoSQL databases.
Mid
What are the main differences between NoSQL and traditional relational databases?
Junior
What is an index in SQL, and why is it used?
Mid
Communication & Messaging
Describe the API gateway pattern and its benefits in Microservices architecture.
Mid
Explain
statelessness
in the context of REST.
Junior
Explain the concept of distributed pub-sub (publish-subscribe) messaging systems and their use in event-driven architectures.
Senior
Explain the difference between TCP and UDP.
Junior
What is an idempotent method?
Mid
What is DNS (Domain Name System), and how does it work?
Junior
Distributed System Theory
Explain Heartbeat and Gossip Protocols.
Senior
Explain the CAP theorem and its implications for distributed systems.
Junior
Explain the concept of distributed consensus and the role of algorithms like Paxos and Raft.
Mid
Explain the concept of eventual consistency in distributed databases.
Mid
Explain the concept of leader election in distributed systems and its role in fault tolerance.
Mid
Explain what N, R, W refer to in terms of a quorum.
Senior
How does eventual consistency differ from strong consistency?
Mid
What is a distributed lock, and why is it important in distributed systems?
Mid
Architectural Patterns
Explain the differences between containerization and virtualization.
Junior
Explain the way to implement service discovery in Microservices Architecture.
Senior
What is a Bloom filter?
Senior
What is a Race Condition?
Senior
What is Exponential Backoff and Jitter?
Mid
What is the Circuit Breaker pattern?
Mid
What is the difference between Monolithic, SOA and Microservices Architecture?
Junior
Caching
Name some cache invalidation strategies.
Mid
What is a CDN?
Junior
What is cache invalidation?
Junior
What is cache replacement?
Senior
What is caching?
Junior
Top 43 System Design Core Concepts Interview Questions And Answers 2025 | TechPrep