System Design Cheat Sheet
System Design Cheat Sheet
2. Estimation
Gather functional & Estimate hardware & infrastructure
non-functional requirements needed to implement at scale
5. APIs
Step 3: Storage schema (optional)*
6. Detailed design Articulate data model
7. Evaluation Define:
• Structure of data
Step 5: APIs
servers.
Databases: Stores, retrieves, modifies, & deletes Step 4: High-level design Translate functional requirements into
data. API calls
• Build high-level design
• Choose building blocks to meet functional
Key-Value Store: Stores data as key-value pairs. E.g.:
requirements
• Requirement: Users should be
able to access all items
Content Delivery Network: Distributes in-demand For each, identify:
• API call: GET / items
content to end users. • How they work
• Why they're needed
Sequencer: Generates unique IDs for events & • How they integrate
Service Monitoring: Analyzes system for failures & • Improve high-level design
sends alerts. • Consider all non-functional
requirements & complete
design
Distributed Caching: Stores frequently accessed
data.