Phase 2: The Toolkit

Relational vs Document vs Graph. How to structure and relate your data for maximum scale.

REST vs GraphQL vs gRPC. Idempotency, versioning, and building contracts that don't break.

The algorithm behind horizontal scaling. Hash rings, virtual nodes, and minimal data movement.

L4 vs L7, Round Robin vs Least Connections. How to distribute traffic without creating hotspots.

Read-through, Write-back, and Eviction policies (LRU/LFU). The art of keeping hot data close.

B-Trees vs LSM Trees. SQL vs NoSQL. Understanding the storage engine determines the use case.

Kafka (Log) vs RabbitMQ (Queue). Decoupling services with asynchronous events.

Serving static assets at scale. Edge locations and object storage design.

Token Bucket vs Sliding Window. Distributed rate limiting with Redis. Protecting your services.

Auth termination, request routing, and circuit breakers at the edge. The front door of your system.

Inverted indexes for search, Geohashes for Uber-like location services, and B-Tree internals.

Redis Redlock vs Zookeeper. How to coordinate access to shared resources without chaos.