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CAP Theorem and Consistency Models Questions

Understand the CAP theorem and how Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance interact in distributed systems. Know different consistency models including strong consistency such as linearizability, eventual consistency, causal consistency, and session consistency, and how to apply them to different use cases. Be familiar with consensus protocols and distributed coordination primitives such as Raft and Paxos, quorum reads and writes, two phase commit and when to use them. Understand trade offs between consistency and availability under network partitions, patterns for hybrid approaches where different data uses different guarantees, and the product and developer experience implications such as latency, stale reads, and API contract clarity.

HardTechnical
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Design a consistency SLA and an error-budget model for a multi-tenant service that allows tenants to choose between strong and eventual consistency tiers. Include how you would measure compliance, bill for stronger guarantees, and throttle tenants to protect the platform.
MediumSystem Design
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Describe hybrid consistency patterns: provide a concrete architecture that keeps metadata strongly consistent (e.g., ownership, schema) while allowing large objects/content to be eventually consistent. Explain routing, write flows, and developer API implications.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Provide an SRE-focused example where you would favor Availability over Consistency during a partition (describe user impact and mitigation), and another example where you must favor Consistency (explain why availability must be sacrificed).
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Briefly explain Raft: leader election, log replication, and safety properties. From an SRE point of view, why is Raft often preferred over Paxos for implementers and operators?
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
What is session consistency (read-your-writes) and how does it help user experience in web applications? Describe two implementation strategies (e.g., sticky sessions, client tokens) and the operational trade-offs each introduces for SREs.

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