Database Architecture and Partitioning Questions

Design database architecture and partitioning strategies appropriate to workload and access patterns. Evaluate database types including relational and various NoSQL models, schema design and indexing strategies, and when to use a monolithic database versus sharding. Cover sharding approaches such as range based, hash based, consistent hashing, and directory based sharding, as well as replica topologies, read replicas, replication lag, and handling cross shard queries. Address operational concerns at scale: resharding, mitigating hot partitions, balancing data distribution, transactional and consistency guarantees, and the trade offs between availability, consistency, and partition tolerance. Include monitoring, migration strategies, and impact on application logic and joins.

MediumSystem Design

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Design a query routing layer for a sharded database. Compare client-side routing, a proxy/router, and a smart ORM in terms of latency, maintainability, and deployability. Explain how you'd handle stale mappings and configuration rollouts safely in production.

MediumSystem Design

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Design a range-based sharding strategy for a customer table to optimize range scans used by analytics queries. Explain how you'd choose initial range boundaries, how to detect growing ranges that require splits, and how you'd minimize operational impact when ranges become unevenly distributed.

EasyBehavioral

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Tell me about a time you led a database-related incident (replication failure, data corruption, or major outage). Describe the incident, your immediate actions, how you communicated with stakeholders during the event, and what you changed afterward (postmortem, automation, tests). Focus on measurable outcomes and learnings.

MediumTechnical

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Outline a backup and point-in-time recovery (PITR) strategy for a sharded relational database. Address storage architecture for backups per shard, retention policies, restoring a single shard versus entire cluster, and how to handle cross-shard transactions for consistent recovery points.

MediumTechnical

0 practiced

Tail latency spikes increased after increasing shard count. Outline how you would diagnose root causes (network issues, coordination overhead, compaction/GC, metadata lookups), which tools and traces you'd use, and what optimizations you would try to reduce tail latency in a sharded datastore.

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