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)