System Design Topics

1. Fundamentals of System Design

• What is System Design?
• Monolithic vs. Microservices Architecture
• CAP Theorem (Consistency, Availability, Partition Tolerance)
• Scalability and Performance Considerations
• Latency vs. Throughput
• Load Balancing Strategies
• Horizontal vs. Vertical Scaling

2. Architecture Patterns

• Microservices Architecture
• Monolithic Architecture
• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Event-Driven Architecture
• Serverless Architecture
• Layered Architecture
• CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation)
• Hexagonal Architecture

3. Networking and Communication

• HTTP vs. WebSockets vs. gRPC
• API Design and RESTful Principles
• GraphQL and RPC
• Message Queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS)
• Reverse Proxy (Nginx, HAProxy)
• CDN (Content Delivery Network)
• DNS and Load Balancers

4. Database Design

• SQL vs. NoSQL Databases
• Database Sharding and Partitioning
• Database Replication
• Caching Strategies (Redis, Memcached)
• Indexing and Query Optimization
• Data Warehousing and OLAP
• Event Sourcing

5. Scalability and High Availability

• Horizontal vs. Vertical Scaling
• Auto-scaling and Load Balancers
• Distributed Systems and Consensus Algorithms (Paxos, Raft)
• Master-Slave and Multi-Master Architectures
• High Availability Strategies (Failover, Redundancy)
• Distributed Caching
• Rate Limiting and Throttling

6. Security and Authentication

• OAuth, JWT, and API Security
• SSL/TLS Encryption
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Data Encryption at Rest and in Transit
• DDoS Protection Mechanisms
• Secure Coding Practices
• Zero Trust Architecture

7. Storage and File Systems

• Distributed File Systems (HDFS, Ceph)
• Block Storage vs. Object Storage
• Cloud Storage Solutions (S3, Azure Blob)
• Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
• Storage Replication and Backup Strategies

8. Logging, Monitoring, and Observability

• Logging Frameworks (ELK Stack, Fluentd)
• Monitoring Tools (Prometheus, Grafana)
• Distributed Tracing (Jaeger, Zipkin)
• Centralized Log Management
• Alerts and Incident Response

9. Message Brokers and Event-Driven Systems

• Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ
• Event Streaming and Pub-Sub Models
• Message Queue Design Patterns
• Eventual Consistency and Idempotency
• Webhooks and Event-Driven Workflows

10. DevOps and CI/CD

• CI/CD Pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI)
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible)
• Containerization and Orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Blue-Green Deployments and Canary Releases
• Configuration Management

11. Search Systems

• Full-Text Search Engines (Elasticsearch, Solr, Lucene)
• Indexing and Search Optimization
• Reverse Indexing and Ranking Algorithms
• Federated Search and Recommendation Systems

12. Distributed Systems

• Distributed Computing Basics
• Leader Election Algorithms
• Data Consistency and Replication
• Distributed Transactions (2PC, Saga)
• Vector Clocks and Conflict Resolution

13. Design Case Studies

• Designing a URL Shortener (Bit.ly)
• Designing a Scalable Chat System (WhatsApp, Slack)
• Designing a Social Media Platform (Facebook, Twitter)
• Designing a Video Streaming Service (YouTube, Netflix)
• Designing an E-Commerce System (Amazon, Shopify)

14. Edge Computing and IoT

• Edge vs. Cloud Computing
• IoT Architectures and Protocols (MQTT, CoAP)
• Fog Computing
• Edge AI and Data Processing