Backend · Senior · System design

The main table in your database has grown to several terabytes, and a single instance can no longer keep up with the writes. How would you design the move to sharding?

~10 min by voice

How to approach it

The interviewer wants to see whether you can make an expensive architectural decision deliberately: exhaust the alternatives first, then choose a shard key from real query patterns, and migrate a live system without downtime or data loss.

Have you seen this question in a real interview?

Answers0

Avg. score—

Strong—

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Topics

sharding distributed systems

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Answer by voice

The interviewer will ask this question and listen. Think out loud and ask for a hint if you need one. When you're done, pause or tap “That's my answer”. In about a minute, your score and the points you covered show up here.

Best with headphones · ~10 min