Learn System Architecture 101

Eight podcast-style lessons on distributed systems — caching, sharding, replication, CAP, load balancing, message queues, microservices, and observability. Listen, read the transcript, take a quiz, then prove your understanding with the final exam.

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Lesson 01

Caching

Hit/miss ratios, eviction policies (LRU/LFU), invalidation, write-through vs write-behind.

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Lesson 02

Sharding

Consistent hashing, range sharding, rebalancing, virtual nodes — splitting data across many machines.

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Lesson 03

Replication

Master-replica, multi-leader, leaderless (Dynamo) — keeping many copies in sync.

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Lesson 04

CAP Theorem

Consistency vs availability vs partition tolerance — when to choose what.

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Lesson 05

Load Balancing

L4 vs L7 balancers, consistent-hashing routing, health checks, hot spots.

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Lesson 06

Message Queues

Kafka, RabbitMQ, pub/sub, delivery guarantees (at-most, at-least, exactly-once).

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Lesson 07

Microservices

Service boundaries, RPC vs REST, service mesh, observability of many small services.

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Lesson 08

Observability

Metrics, logs, traces, SLOs, and alerting — knowing what your system is doing.

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Final Exam

Complete 7 more lessons to unlock.