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Picking the right architecture = Picking the right battles + Managing trade-offs
- Clarify and agree on the scope of the system
- User cases (description of sequences of events that, taken together, lead to a system doing something useful)
- Who is going to use it?
- How are they going to use it?
- Constraints
- Mainly identifytraffic and data handling constraints at scale.
- Scale of the system such as requests per second, requests types, data written per second, data read per second)
- Special system requirements such as multi-threading, read or write oriented.
- High level architecture design (Abstract design)
- Sketch the important components and connections between them, but don't go into some details.
- Application service layer (serves the requests)
- List different services required.
- Data Storage layer
- eg. Usually a scalable system includes webserver (load balancer), service (service partition), database (master/slave database cluster) and caching systems.
- Component Design
- Component + specificAPIs required for each of them.
- Object oriented design for functionalities.
- Map features to modules: One scenario for one module.
- Consider the relationships among modules:
- Certain functions must have unique instance (Singletons)
- Core object can be made up of many other objects (composition).
- One object is another object (inheritance)
- Database schema design.
- Understanding Bottlenecks
- Perhaps your system needs a load balancer and many machines behind it to handle the user requests. * Or maybe the data is so huge that you need to distribute your database on multiple machines. What are some of the downsides that occur from doing that?
- Is the database too slow and does it need some in-memory caching?
- Scaling your abstract design
- Vertical scaling
- You scale by adding more power (CPU, RAM) to your existing machine.
- Horizontal scaling
- You scale by adding more machines into your pool of resources.
- Caching
- Load balancing helps you scale horizontally across an ever-increasing number of servers, but caching will enable you to make vastly better use of the resources you already have, as well as making otherwise unattainable product requirements feasible.
- Application caching requires explicit integration in the application code itself. Usually it will check if a value is in the cache; if not, retrieve the value from the database.
- Database caching tends to be "free". When you flip your database on, you're going to get some level of default configuration which will provide some degree of caching and performance. Those initial settings will be optimized for a generic usecase, and by tweaking them to your system's access patterns you can generally squeeze a great deal of performance improvement.
- In-memory caches are most potent in terms of raw performance. This is because they store their entire set of data in memory and accesses to RAM are orders of magnitude faster than those to disk. eg. Memcached or Redis.
- eg. Precalculating results (e.g. the number of visits from each referring domain for the previous day),
- eg. Pre-generating expensive indexes (e.g. suggested stories based on a user's click history)
- eg. Storing copies of frequently accessed data in a faster backend (e.g. Memcache instead of PostgreSQL.
- Load balancing
- Public servers of a scalable web service are hidden behind a load balancer. This load balancer evenly distributes load (requests from your users) onto your group/cluster of application servers.
- Types: Smart client (hard to get it perfect), Hardware load balancers ($$$ but reliable), Software load balancers (hybrid - works for most systems)
- Database replication
- Database replication is the frequent electronic copying data from a database in one computer or server to a database in another so that all users share the same level of information. The result is a distributed database in which users can access data relevant to their tasks without interfering with the work of others. The implementation of database replication for the purpose of eliminating data ambiguity or inconsistency among users is known as normalization.
- Database partitioning
- Partitioning of relational data usually refers to decomposing your tables either row-wise (horizontally) or column-wise (vertically).
- Map-Reduce
- For sufficiently small systems you can often get away with adhoc queries on a SQL database, but that approach may not scale up trivially once the quantity of data stored or write-load requires sharding your database, and will usually require dedicated slaves for the purpose of performing these queries (at which point, maybe you'd rather use a system designed for analyzing large quantities of data, rather than fighting your database).
- Adding a map-reduce layer makes it possible to perform data and/or processing intensive operations in a reasonable amount of time. You might use it for calculating suggested users in a social graph, or for generating analytics reports. eg. Hadoop, and maybe Hive or HBase.
- Platform Layer (Services)
- Separating the platform and web application allow you to scale the pieces independently. If you add a new API, you can add platform servers without adding unnecessary capacity for your web application tier.
- Adding a platform layer can be a way to reuse your infrastructure for multiple products or interfaces (a web application, an API, an iPhone app, etc) without writing too much redundant boilerplate code for dealing with caches, databases, etc.
- Concurrency
- Do you understand threads, deadlock, and starvation? Do you know how to parallelize algorithms? Do you understand consistency and coherence?
- Networking
- Do you roughly understand IPC and TCP/IP? Do you know the difference between throughput and latency, and when each is the relevant factor?
- Abstraction
- You should understand the systems you’re building upon. Do you know roughly how an OS, file system, and database work? Do you know about the various levels of caching in a modern OS?
- Real-World Performance
- You should be familiar with the speed of everything your computer can do, including the relative performance of RAM, disk, SSD and your network.
- Estimation
- Estimation, especially in the form of a back-of-the-envelope calculation, is important because it helps you narrow down the list of possible solutions to only the ones that are feasible. Then you have only a few prototypes or micro-benchmarks to write.
- Availability & Reliability
- Are you thinking about how things can fail, especially in a distributed environment? Do know how to design a system to cope with network failures? Do you understand durability?
- Security (CORS)
- Using CDN
- A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver webpages and other Web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server.
- This service is effective in speeding the delivery of content of websites with high traffic and websites that have global reach. The closer the CDN server is to the user geographically, the faster the content will be delivered to the user.
- CDNs also provide protection from large surges in traffic.
- Full Text Search
- Using Sphinx/Lucene/Solr - which achieve fast search responses because, instead of searching the text directly, it searches an index instead.
- Offline support/Progressive enhancement
- Service Workers
- Web Workers
- Server Side rendering
- Asynchronous loading of assets (Lazy load items)
- Minimizing network requests (Http2 + bundling/sprites etc)
- Developer productivity/Tooling
- Accessibility
- Internationalization
- Responsive design
- Browser compatibility
- Code
- HTML5/WAI-ARIA
- CSS/Sass Code standards and organization
- Object-Oriented approach (how do objects break down and get put together)
- JS frameworks/organization/performance optimization techniques
- Asset Delivery - Front-end Ops
- Documentation
- Onboarding Docs
- Styleguide/Pattern Library
- Architecture Diagrams (code flow, tool chain)
- Testing
- Performance Testing
- Visual Regression
- Unit Testing
- End-to-End Testing
- Process
- Git Workflow
- Dependency Management (npm, Bundler, Bower)
- Build Systems (Grunt/Gulp)
- Deploy Process
- Continuous Integration (Travis CI, Jenkins)
Links
Introduction to Architecting Systems for Scale
Scalable System Design Patterns
Scalable Web Architecture and Distributed Systems
What is the best way to design a web site to be highly scalable?
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riteshjain01 commentedDec 18, 2024
Great resource! This is a concise and comprehensive guide for understandingfront-end technologies. I appreciate how you've broken down the landscape into clear categories—it really helps in grasping the big picture. A quick suggestion: adding links to official documentation or popular tutorials for each technology might make this even more actionable for beginners. Keep up the great work!
michaelharrington19 commentedFeb 10, 2025
This system design guide is incredibly well-written! It's clear, concise, and covers all the essential topics. As someone who works in mobile app development, I can see how the concepts here can be applied directly to real-world projects. Whether you're scaling an app or optimizing your database structure, the insights here are invaluable. If you're building a mobile app and looking for expert advice, working with aTop Mobile App Development Company In Delaware could be the perfect way to ensure your app is both scalable and efficient.
nimbleappgenieuae commentedMay 6, 2025
This cheatsheet is a goldmine for anyone diving into the complexities of system design. From handling concurrency and caching to understanding bottlenecks and choosing the right scaling strategy, it captures everything in a structured and approachable way. For amobile app development company in Dubai, where performance and scalability are non-negotiable, these principles are not just useful—they're essential. Implementing concepts like database partitioning, service-oriented architecture, and smart load balancing helps ensure that applications remain robust under real-world loads. Truly an invaluable reference for modern app developers aiming to build systems that scale seamlessly.
smithdainel commentedMay 25, 2025
Great resource! The System Design Cheatsheet is super helpful for understanding architecture fundamentals and scaling strategies. Whether you're a beginner or experienced developer, it’s a solid reference. If you're working with amobile app development company, sharing this guide with your tech team can streamline planning and build more efficient, scalable apps. Thanks for sharing!
justinhall1988 commentedJun 4, 2025
The "System Design Cheatsheet" provides a solid overview of key architectural principles like caching, load balancing, and database partitioning. It’s a practical guide for designing scalable systems.
A great real-world example of these principles in action isMEV, a software development company that builds cloud-native, modular solutions for industries like healthcare and fashion. Their focus on scalable, data-driven architectures reflects many of the best practices outlined in the article.
goyalvikas13456 commentedJun 6, 2025 • edited
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Thanks for sharing the System Design Cheatsheet—this is a great resource for both beginners and experienced developers! It’s essential to understand key components like load balancing, caching, database scaling, and microservices architecture when working on large-scale applications. If you're working on a real-world project or planning to launch a scalable mobile application, collaborating with an expertmobile app development company in Denver can help you implement these system design principles effectively. They bring practical experience and tech know-how that align with modern architecture standards.
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robert983roberp commentedJun 26, 2025 • edited
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Fantastic cheatsheet—you’ve nailed the way every system-design decision is really a trade-off between speed, reliability, and cost. I see the same balancing act every day in the pro-AV world: when we roll out enterprise-wide control and monitoring platforms we have to design for peak traffic from hundreds of rooms, cache status data for sub-second touch-panel response, and partition databases so video analytics don’t bog down the scheduling API. If anyone’s curious about how these principles apply beyond pure software, here’s a real-world case study from our team’sav integration services —we’ve used horizontal scaling plus edge caching to keep live video switching latency under 40 ms even during global town-halls. Your notes on load-balancing and in-memory caching line up perfectly with what we’re doing. Great read!
Appinginedenver commentedJul 16, 2025
Thank you for sharing this comprehensive System Design Cheatsheet — it’s an incredibly valuable reference for engineers, architects, and technical decision-makers alike. The breakdown of components, from abstract architecture to platform services, effectively highlights how modern system design is all about balancing performance, scalability, and resilience while managing trade-offs across layers.
As someone involved with a mobile app development company in Denver, I can especially relate to how crucial it is to choose the right system architecture from the outset. For our clients, scalability, caching strategies (like Redis/Memcached), and database partitioning are frequent focal points, especially as usage scales.
I really appreciate the inclusion of real-world considerations like load balancing, MapReduce for large-scale analytics, CDNs for content delivery, and modern front-end architecture elements like service workers and server-side rendering. These are all things we actively implement at ourmobile app development company Denver, especially when crafting apps that must perform reliably under high load or deliver seamless UX across different devices and networks.
A few highlights I found particularly useful:
The reminder that caching is often the biggest performance multiplier.
The distinction between vertical vs. horizontal scaling.
The emphasis on real-world performance metrics and understanding the limitations of infrastructure.
Practical advice on designing with concurrency, consistency, and availability in mind—key in distributed systems.
In today’s fast-moving mobile ecosystem, a well-architected backend is just as vital as the app’s front-end interface. Whether we’re building for startups or enterprise-level clients, this kind of system design thinking ensures that we don’t just ship features, but we ship stable, secure, and scalable products.
Thanks again for this deep dive it’s a great reminder of how strong foundations in system design directly impact the success of modern mobile applications.
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Wow, this is such an insightful guide to system architecture and development! The detailed breakdown of crucial steps makes it an excellent resource for app design and implementation. As someone engaged in the mobile app development industry and always learning from thebest mobile app development company in UAE, I found your focus on aspects like load balancing, database replication, and layered platform architecture extremely valuable. These elements are essential for delivering robust, scalable, and high-performing applications. Your comprehensive approach truly simplifies the complexity of system architecture!
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This cheatsheet is a treasure trove for anyone exploring the principles of system design. It collects and summarizes specific concepts like concurrency, caching, bottlenecks, and scaling methods, in an organized and easily digestible format. For amobile app development company in Singapore where performance and scalability are mandatory, these concepts are not only helpful—they are critical and necessary. Principles like database partitioning, service-oriented architecture, and intelligent load balancing can help applications hold up against real-world weights. Truly an exceptional reference for app developers of today's world wanting to develop and sustain systems that scale.
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Excellent breakdown! Clear, structured, and practical — this kind of system design approach is exactly what we follow at ourmobile app development company Dallas, especially when building scalable backend architectures for complex applications.
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apptunix02 commentedDec 17, 2025
Excellent resource! The cheatsheet presents system design concepts in a clear, practical way that’s easy to apply in real-world scenarios. This kind of structured thinking is exactly what we follow at amobile app development company in Australia when designing scalable, high-performance applications. Great work putting this together!