Distributed Systems Visual Guide
An interactive learning website for senior engineers and system designers. Each module blends precise explanations with animations, playgrounds, and diagrams that build intuition.
Core Topics
System design foundations
Practical framework for requirements, architecture choices, and failure analysis.
Distributed Algorithms
Consistent hashing, quorum, Raft, LSM, Bloom filters, and vector clocks.
Compute patterns
Service placement, scaling, and load distribution fundamentals.
Storage and data patterns
Replication, sharding, and the architectural shape of data systems.
Database patterns
How to build relational, non-relational, and vector databases from scratch.
Distributed transactions
2PC, consensus-backed commits, and sagas for cross-shard atomicity.
Consistency models
Strong, causal, and eventual guarantees with practical trade-offs.
Networking patterns
Discovery, gateways, and protocol choices for reliable routing.
Latency Numbers
Jeff Dean's numbers everyone should know. Visualized.
Kubernetes patterns
Pods, controllers, sidecars, and safe deployment strategies.
Operating systems
Virtualization, concurrency, and persistence fundamentals.
SOLID design principles
Build maintainable service code with stable responsibilities and interfaces.
Interactive Playgrounds
Kubernetes architecture explorer
Watch control loops, reconciliation, and failure recovery unfold.
Load balancing distribution
See how strategy choice shifts traffic and hot spots.
Retry storms
Model failure rates and retry amplification in real time.
Autoscaling response
Explore how HPA reacts to load and limits.
Shard skew
Visualize uneven keys and their impact on partitions.
Quorum budgets
Balance read and write quorums for desired guarantees.
How to Use This Guide
- Start with compute patterns to align on workload and scaling primitives.
- Use the storage, database, and consistency pages to reason about data trade-offs.
- Cross-link into networking and Kubernetes when you need operational detail.
- Reference operating systems to ground scheduling, memory, and I/O behavior.