System design topics: start here

New to system design?

First, you'll need a basic understanding of common principles, learning about what they are, how they are used, and their pros and cons.

Step 1: Review the scalability video lecture

Scalability Lecture at Harvard

• Topics covered:
  • Vertical scaling
  • Horizontal scaling
  • Caching
  • Load balancing
  • Database replication
  • Database partitioning

Step 2: Review the scalability article

Scalability

• Topics covered:
  • Clones
  • Databases
  • Caches
  • Asynchronism

Next steps

Next, we'll look at high-level trade-offs:

• Performance vs scalability
• Latency vs throughput
• Availability vs consistency

Keep in mind that everything is a trade-off.

Then we'll dive into more specific topics such as DNS, CDNs, and load balancers.