AdvancedSystem-Design
45 min
Design a Monitoring System
System DesignMonitoringObservabilityKubernetes
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Interview Question
Design a monitoring and alerting system for a microservices architecture running on Kubernetes. Consider metrics, logs, traces, and alerting.
Key Points to Cover
- Three pillars: Metrics (Prometheus), Logs (ELK/Loki), Traces (Jaeger)
- Service mesh integration for automatic instrumentation
- Alerting hierarchy: severity levels and escalation
- Dashboards for different audiences (dev, ops, business)
- SLI/SLO definition and error budget tracking
- Cost considerations and data retention policies
Evaluation Rubric
Identifies key monitoring components25% weight
Designs scalable architecture25% weight
Shows K8s and microservices integration25% weight
Considers operational aspects (SLOs, alerting)25% weight
Hints
- 💡Think about the three pillars of observability
- 💡Consider different user personas
Potential Follow-up Questions
- ❓How would you handle high-cardinality metrics?
- ❓What about cross-cluster monitoring?
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