Evaluation and selection of database and data platform technologies to meet analytical and operational needs. Covers assessment of relational, non relational, columnar, and specialized systems such as time series and search engines; data warehouse platforms and cloud analytics platforms; query patterns and workload characteristics; consistency and transactional guarantees; partitioning and clustering strategies; storage formats and compression; performance and scalability trade offs; operational complexity and administration overhead; data ingestion and incremental loading patterns; pricing and cloud platform considerations; and how to choose the right solution based on data volume, concurrency, latency requirements, and total cost of ownership.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
Propose a sharding and rebalancing algorithm for a keyspace with high cardinality where hotspots can form dynamically. Explain shard placement heuristics, rebalancing triggers, minimizing data movement, and how to handle extremely hot keys (e.g., fan-out, write-through cache, key-splitting).
HardTechnical
0 practiced
You're planning to replace a monolithic analytical database with an ELT pipeline into a cloud data warehouse. Describe migration steps, data validation and reconciliation methods, cut-over plan, rollback criteria, and how to maintain data parity during the transition while minimizing analyst disruption.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Describe core characteristics of time-series databases (e.g., InfluxDB, TimescaleDB) and key operational features SREs must manage: high ingestion rates, retention policies, downsampling, compression, compaction, and schema design for metrics and events. Include typical scaling strategies and common pitfalls.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Describe common backup types (full, incremental, differential, point-in-time recovery) and key SRE concerns when creating a backup policy: RTO, RPO, restore testing, storage cost, encryption, and impact on primary performance for large databases.
HardSystem Design
0 practiced
Design a zero-downtime schema migration process for a globally distributed, sharded database where the new schema must be available in all regions within one hour, and rollbacks must be safe and quick. Include coordination mechanisms, backward-compatible schema patterns, feature flags, data copy strategies, and rollback criteria.
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