Category System Design

Introduction Securing APIs is critical in cloud-native applications to protect against abuse, ensure availability, and maintain data integrity in distributed systems. Methods such as rate limiting, throttling, HMAC (Hash-based Message Authentication Code), and JWT (JSON Web Tokens) provide robust mechanisms to safeguard APIs, supporting high scalability…

Introduction Encryption is a cornerstone of cloud security, protecting sensitive data against unauthorized access, tampering, and breaches in distributed systems. It encompasses encryption in transit, which secures data as it moves across networks, and encryption at rest, which safeguards stored data. These techniques…

Introduction Authentication and authorization are foundational components of secure cloud-native applications, ensuring that only verified users and services access resources while adhering to least-privilege principles. Modern protocols like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC) provide robust mechanisms for managing identity and access in distributed systems,…

Introduction Observability in cloud-native applications is a critical discipline for understanding and managing the behavior, performance, and health of distributed systems. It encompasses metrics, tracing, and logging to provide actionable insights into system operations, enabling architects to ensure high availability (e.g., 99.999% uptime), scalability (e.g.,…

Introduction Cost optimization in cloud system design is a critical practice for maximizing the value of cloud investments while maintaining performance, scalability (e.g., 1M req/s), and high availability (e.g., 99.999% uptime). As organizations adopt cloud-native architectures for applications like e-commerce platforms,…

Introduction Cloud security is a foundational pillar of modern system design, ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data, applications, and infrastructure in cloud environments. Core components—Identity and Access Management (IAM), Secrets Management, and Key Management—provide mechanisms to control access, secure sensitive data,…

Introduction Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a cornerstone of modern system design, enabling automated, repeatable, and version-controlled management of infrastructure in cloud-native environments. Tools like Terraform and Pulumi allow architects to define infrastructure resources (e.g., compute instances, databases, networks) as code, facilitating rapid provisioning, scalability…

Introduction Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines are critical components of modern system design, enabling automated, reliable, and rapid delivery of software in distributed systems. CI/CD pipelines streamline the process of building, testing, and deploying applications, ensuring high availability (e.g.,…

Introduction The 12-Factor App methodology, developed by Heroku, provides a set of principles for building scalable, maintainable, and portable cloud-native applications. These principles are designed to optimize applications for modern cloud environments, ensuring high availability (e.g., 99.999% uptime), scalability (e.g., 1M req/s),…