System Design Mind Map For Building Distributed Systems

System design is foundational for building software architecture in relation to the system under consideration. For building distributed systems, the role of system design has been the key focus area starting with back-of-the-envelop calculations during the brainstorming phase.

Whether you are preparing for a system design interview or a workshop as part of distributed system’s planning phase, covering the broader spectrum of knowledge areas is essential from a software architecture perspective. This article’s focus is to provide pointers to respective subject areas in the form of a mind map considering the breadth & depth of system design.

While there are tips/suggestions to be effective in system design, a word of advice is to practice, practice & more practice.

As there is no such thing as perfect design or architecture, applying the approach below iteratively goes a long way:

• Ask clarifying questions — ensuring that you capture functional & non-functional requirements in terms of system availability (how many 9’s to support), security (think about zero-trust security and defense-in-depth), consistency (Eventual Consistency or ACID)
• Establish estimates for meeting the requirements — the compute, storage, and networking required to meet the stated requirements by applying back-of-the-envelop calculations. Click here to read about Google’s guide on the rule of thumb calculations.