Design Bigtable System Design Interview

1. Problem Statement

2. Architecture Discussion Map

Use this as one discussion aid, not a single correct answer. Your design should follow from the requirements, scale, and trade-offs you establish.

graph TD
    A[Client] --> B(Chubby Lock Service)
    B --> C[Master Node]
    C --> D[Tablet Server 1]
    C --> E[Tablet Server 2]
    D --> F[(MemTable - RAM)]
    F -.->|Flush & Compaction| G[(SSTable / GFS)]
    D --> H[(Write-Ahead Log)]

3. Key Focus Areas

• 1
  LSM Trees (MemTable, SSTable)
• 2
  Tablet/Region Splitting
• 3
  Master/Worker Architecture (GFD/HDFS underbelly)
• 4
  Bloom Filters
• 5
  Compaction Strategies