Consistent Hashing →
A distributed hashing technique that maps both server nodes and keys to a logical circular hash ring, ensuring that adding or removing a node requires remapping only K/N keys.
System Design Core Knowledge
Distributed Systems & Architecture Glossary
Master the foundational building blocks, theoretical theorems, and trade-off dimensions evaluated in senior and staff distributed system design interviews.
Distributed Systems
Distributed Systems Architectural Terms
Core concepts and trade-offs tested in high-scale engineering rounds.
CAP Theorem →
The fundamental theorem stating that in the presence of a network partition (P), a distributed data store must choose between Consistency (C) and Availability (A).
Two-Phase Commit (2PC) →
An atomic commitment protocol used in distributed systems to ensure that all participating database nodes either commit or abort a distributed transaction together.
Storage & Caching
Storage & Caching Architectural Terms
Core concepts and trade-offs tested in high-scale engineering rounds.
Bloom Filters →
A space-efficient probabilistic data structure used to test whether an element is a member of a set, allowing false positives but zero false negatives.
Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) →
An append-only disk logging technique where database state changes are recorded sequentially to durable storage before being applied to in-memory pages or data files.
Quadtree Geospatial Indexing →
A tree data structure in which each internal node has exactly four children, used to recursively partition a 2D spatial area for fast geographic proximity search.
Reliability & Scalability
Reliability & Scalability Architectural Terms
Core concepts and trade-offs tested in high-scale engineering rounds.
Rate Limiting Algorithms →
Algorithmic strategies (Token Bucket, Leaky Bucket, Sliding Window Counter) used to throttle inbound network traffic and protect backend APIs from overload.
Circuit Breaker Pattern →
A microservice resiliency pattern that prevents cascading failures by stopping calls to a failing downstream service when its error rate crosses a threshold.
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