System Resource and Input Output Optimization Questions
Techniques for managing system resources and optimizing input output including memory management, buffer and cache tuning, storage tiering and device selection, disk access patterns and throughput trade offs, central processing unit utilization, contention resolution, and diagnosing resource bottlenecks. Candidates should discuss monitoring and observability, trade offs between latency and throughput, caching strategies, memory pooling and fragmentation mitigation, and platform specific constraints when optimizing resource usage.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Explain read-ahead and prefetching mechanisms at OS and application levels. When does read-ahead improve performance and when can it harm throughput or latency? Describe how you would tune readahead for a media streaming service serving large sequential reads.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
A long-running Java service shows steadily increasing heap usage until it runs out of memory. Describe how you would diagnose and fix the leak in production: which tools you'd use (heap dump, jmap, jcmd, MAT), how to collect evidence safely, sampling strategy, and steps to patch and roll out a fix with minimal downtime.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Given two storage device families — traditional HDD and NVMe SSD — explain which you would choose for: (a) large sequential media archival writes, (b) OLTP workloads with small random writes, (c) time-series ingestion combined with compaction. Discuss cost, latency, IOPS, throughput, and write amplification trade-offs.
MediumSystem Design
0 practiced
Design a multi-layer caching strategy for a read-heavy web application that includes: local in-process cache, distributed cache (Redis/Memcached), and CDN layer. Specify which data belongs in each layer, invalidation strategies, cache warmup approaches, and how to satisfy strong consistency requirements where necessary.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Explain the trade-offs between latency and throughput. Provide three real-world examples where you would favor latency over throughput and three where you would favor throughput over latency, and describe design choices such as batching, concurrency, and priority queues that influence the trade-off.
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