System Design Fundamentals Questions

Reason about simple system architectures and the interactions between compute, networking, storage, and data services. Topics include decomposing requirements into components, selecting appropriate data stores and caching strategies, discussing availability and scaling approaches, stateless versus stateful design, basic partitioning and replication patterns, and trade offs such as complexity versus maintainability. For interview purposes focus on clear diagrams, justification for design choices, and communication of trade offs rather than enterprise scale details.