A knowledge base distilled from 14 books
Systems, at scale.
Scalability fundamentals, caching, databases, messaging, distributed systems theory, reliability, and the architecture decisions behind systems that hold up under load — organized into domains and topics, cross-linked into one knowledge graph.
- Domains
- 11
- Topics
- 65
- Graph edges
- 140
System Design FoundationsThe vocabulary and back-of-envelope reasoning every design decision downstream depends on: scale, tradeoffs, and what "available" and "consistent" actually mean.Networking & Traffic ManagementHow a request finds its way from a client to the right server, and how traffic gets spread across a fleet of them.Identity & Access ManagementWho is this request from, and what are they allowed to do — the authentication and authorization layer every other domain in this compendium quietly assumes already works.CachingThe single highest-leverage technique for making a slow system feel fast — and the invalidation problems that come with it.Databases at ScaleWhat happens to a database once it has to survive replication, partitioning, and concurrent writes at scale.Messaging & Stream ProcessingDecoupling producers from consumers with queues, topics, and logs — and the delivery-guarantee tradeoffs that come with each.Distributed Systems TheoryThe theory that makes multi-machine systems provably correct (or explains exactly how they fail): consensus, ordering, and coordination.Reliability & ResilienceDesigning for failure instead of hoping it won't happen: containment, backoff, and graceful degradation under load.Scalability & Architecture PatternsThe structural decisions — statelessness, service boundaries, multi-region — that determine whether a system can actually scale out.Observability & OperationsKnowing what your system is doing in production, and what to do when it stops doing it correctly.System Design Case StudiesWorked, end-to-end designs that put every other domain here to use on a single, concrete product.
Distilled from
- Designing Data-Intensive ApplicationsMartin Kleppmann
- Database Internals: A Deep Dive into How Distributed Data Systems WorkAlex Petrov
- Designing Distributed Systems (2nd ed.)Brendan Burns
- System Design Interview – An Insider's GuideAlex Xu
- System Design Interview – An Insider's Guide, Volume 2Alex Xu, Sahn Lam
- Grokking the System Design InterviewEducative.io
- System Design: The Big Archive (2024 ed.)ByteByteGo Newsletter
- Web Scalability for Startup EngineersArtur Ejsmont
- Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production SystemsBetsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, Niall Richard Murphy
- Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software (2nd ed.)Michael T. Nygard
- OAuth 2 in ActionJustin Richer, Antonio Sanso
- Solving Identity Management in Modern Applications (2nd ed.)Yvonne Wilson, Abhishek Hingnikar
- Zero Trust Networks (2nd ed.)Razi Rais, Christina Morillo, Evan Gilman, Doug Barth
- API Security in ActionNeil Madden