What is it?
Scalability is a system's ability to handle growing amounts of work. Vertical scaling adds more CPU/RAM to one machine. Horizontal scaling adds more machines.
Why does it matter?
Every successful application outgrows a single server. Understanding when to scale up vs scale out prevents costly rearchitecting later.
Understand vertical scaling (bigger machines) vs horizontal scaling (more machines) and when to use each.
Real-World Use Cases
- 🏢 Enterprise systems - Used in large-scale systems.
- ⚡ Performance - Critical for high-traffic applications.
- 🎓 Interviews - Common system design interview topic.
- 🔧 Engineering - Core software engineering skill.
Core Concepts
# Scalability: Vertical vs Horizontal Scaling
# Understand vertical scaling (bigger machines) vs horizontal scaling (more machines) and when to use each.
# Key considerations:
# 1. Scalability
# 2. Reliability
# 3. Availability
# 4. PerformanceArchitecture Diagram
# Scalability is a system's ability to handle growing amounts of work. Vertical scaling adds more CPU/RAM to one machine. Horizontal scaling adds more machines.
# Common components:
# - Load Balancer -> App Servers
# - App Servers -> Cache (Redis)
# - App Servers -> Database (Primary + Replica)
# - CDN for static assetsTrade-offs and Decisions
# Design trade-offs:
# Consistency vs Availability (CAP Theorem)
# Latency vs Throughput
# Cost vs Performance
# Simplicity vs Scalability
# Scale estimates:
# DAU: 10M users
# Reads: 100K QPS
# Writes: 10K QPSQ: What are the most important system design interview topics?
The core topics: scalability (vertical vs horizontal), caching (Redis, Memcached), databases (SQL vs NoSQL, sharding), load balancers, message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ), API design (REST, GraphQL), and the CAP theorem. For FAANG interviews, also know: consistent hashing, Bloom filters, and rate limiting.
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