System Resource and Input Output Optimization Questions
Techniques for managing system resources and optimizing input output including memory management, buffer and cache tuning, storage tiering and device selection, disk access patterns and throughput trade offs, central processing unit utilization, contention resolution, and diagnosing resource bottlenecks. Candidates should discuss monitoring and observability, trade offs between latency and throughput, caching strategies, memory pooling and fragmentation mitigation, and platform specific constraints when optimizing resource usage.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
Design a per-customer IOPS throttling mechanism for a shared storage service that enforces a maximum IOPS limit X per tenant. Discuss enforcement points (kernel/block layer, hypervisor, or proxy), token-bucket vs leaky-bucket approaches, fairness, accounting accuracy, and the impact on latency.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Explain NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) and its effects on performance in multi-socket servers. How would you design and tune a service to be NUMA-friendly including CPU/memory pinning, thread affinity, allocator choices, and testing approaches?
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Given two storage device families — traditional HDD and NVMe SSD — explain which you would choose for: (a) large sequential media archival writes, (b) OLTP workloads with small random writes, (c) time-series ingestion combined with compaction. Discuss cost, latency, IOPS, throughput, and write amplification trade-offs.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
Tail latency (p99, p999) often dominates user experience. Describe techniques to reduce tail latency across services: hedged requests, connection pooling, resource isolation, adaptive timeouts, queuing disciplines, and request prioritization. For each technique list benefits and potential downsides.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
What is the Linux page cache and how does it influence application-level read/write performance? Explain buffered writes, write-back behavior, the semantics of fsync, and give examples of when bypassing the page cache helps or hurts.
Unlock Full Question Bank
Get access to hundreds of System Resource and Input Output Optimization interview questions and detailed answers.
Sign in to ContinueJoin thousands of developers preparing for their dream job.