System Design Mastery Roadmap
Master the art of building scalable systems. Learn from real-world examples and design patterns used by top tech companies like Google, Netflix, and Amazon.
System Design Fundamentals
| Concept | Status |
|---|---|
| Core Concepts | |
| Scalability Principles | |
| Reliability & Availability | |
| Consistency Models | |
| CAP Theorem | |
| ACID vs BASE | |
| Trade-offs in System Design | |
| Performance Metrics | |
| Latency vs Throughput | |
| Response Time SLAs | |
| Capacity Planning | |
| Performance Monitoring | |
Load Balancing & Caching
| Concept | Status |
|---|---|
| Load Balancing | |
| Layer 4 vs Layer 7 Load Balancing | |
| Round Robin Algorithm | |
| Weighted Round Robin | |
| Least Connections | |
| IP Hash Load Balancing | |
| Health Checks & Failover | |
| Caching Strategies | |
| Cache-Aside Pattern | |
| Write-Through Caching | |
| Write-Behind (Write-Back) Caching | |
| Refresh-Ahead Caching | |
| Cache Eviction Policies (LRU, LFU, FIFO) | |
| Distributed Caching (Redis, Memcached) | |
| CDN & Edge Caching | |
Database Design & Management
| Concept | Status |
|---|---|
| SQL Databases | |
| RDBMS Design Principles | |
| Database Normalization | |
| ACID Properties | |
| Indexing Strategies | |
| Query Optimization | |
| Database Partitioning | |
| NoSQL Databases | |
| Document Databases (MongoDB) | |
| Key-Value Stores (DynamoDB, Redis) | |
| Column-Family (Cassandra, HBase) | |
| Graph Databases (Neo4j) | |
| CAP Theorem in NoSQL | |
| Database Scaling | |
| Master-Slave Replication | |
| Master-Master Replication | |
| Database Sharding | |
| Federation (Functional Partitioning) | |
| Database Denormalization | |
Microservices & API Design
| Concept | Status |
|---|---|
| Microservices Architecture | |
| Microservices vs Monolith | |
| Service Decomposition Strategies | |
| Domain-Driven Design (DDD) | |
| Bounded Contexts | |
| Data Management in Microservices | |
| Service Communication | |
| Synchronous Communication (REST, GraphQL) | |
| Asynchronous Communication (Message Queues) | |
| Service Mesh (Istio, Linkerd) | |
| API Gateway Pattern | |
| Circuit Breaker Pattern | |
| Saga Pattern | |
| API Design | |
| RESTful API Design Principles | |
| API Versioning Strategies | |
| Rate Limiting & Throttling | |
| API Authentication & Authorization | |
| GraphQL vs REST | |
Message Queues & Event-Driven Architecture
| Concept | Status |
|---|---|
| Message Queues | |
| Queue vs Topic vs Exchange | |
| Message Brokers (RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka) | |
| Message Ordering & Partitioning | |
| Dead Letter Queues | |
| Message Durability & Persistence | |
| Event-Driven Architecture | |
| Event Sourcing | |
| CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) | |
| Event Store Design | |
| Publish-Subscribe Pattern | |
| Event Schema Evolution | |
| Stream Processing | |
| Apache Kafka Streams | |
| Apache Storm | |
| Real-time vs Batch Processing | |
| Stream Windowing | |
Distributed Systems
| Concept | Status |
|---|---|
| Consensus Algorithms | |
| Raft Consensus Algorithm | |
| Paxos Algorithm | |
| Byzantine Fault Tolerance | |
| Leader Election | |
| Consistency & Replication | |
| Strong vs Eventual Consistency | |
| Vector Clocks | |
| Merkle Trees | |
| Gossip Protocol | |
| Quorum-based Systems | |
| Distributed Data | |
| Consistent Hashing | |
| Data Partitioning Strategies | |
| Distributed Transactions | |
| Two-Phase Commit (2PC) | |
| Three-Phase Commit (3PC) | |
Security & Monitoring
| Concept | Status |
|---|---|
| Security Fundamentals | |
| Authentication vs Authorization | |
| OAuth 2.0 & OpenID Connect | |
| JWT (JSON Web Tokens) | |
| HTTPS/TLS Implementation | |
| API Security Best Practices | |
| Data Encryption (At Rest & In Transit) | |
| Monitoring & Observability | |
| Metrics, Logs, and Traces | |
| Application Performance Monitoring (APM) | |
| Distributed Tracing | |
| Health Checks & Alerting | |
| Log Aggregation & Analysis | |
| SLI/SLO/SLA Definition | |
Real-world System Design
| Concept | Status |
|---|---|
| Large-Scale Systems | |
| Design a URL Shortener (like Bit.ly) | |
| Design a Social Media Feed (like Twitter) | |
| Design a Chat System (like WhatsApp) | |
| Design a Video Streaming Platform (like YouTube) | |
| Design a Ride-sharing Service (like Uber) | |
| Design a Search Engine (like Google) | |
| E-commerce & Payment Systems | |
| Design an E-commerce Platform | |
| Design a Payment Processing System | |
| Design an Online Banking System | |
| Design a Digital Wallet | |
| Content & Media Systems | |
| Design a Content Delivery Network (CDN) | |
| Design a News Feed Aggregator | |
| Design a Photo Sharing Service (like Instagram) | |
| Design a Music Streaming Service (like Spotify) | |