Code RoomEmbedding model migration zero-downtime
HardPrep Room Coding #3221

Embedding model migration zero-downtime

System designML systemsSenior–Staff~45 min

An e-commerce semantic-search system has 300M product embeddings serving live traffic, and the ML team wants to upgrade the embedding model to a better one. The new model produces vectors in a different space, so old and new embeddings are not comparable — you cannot mix them in one index. You must migrate 300M items to the new embedding without taking search down and without a window where results are garbage. Design the embedding-versioning and zero-downtime re-embedding migration.

What a strong answer looks like

Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts (data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes) and name the trade-offs you are making.

Clarify5:00 left
Estimate5:00 planned
Design15:00 planned
Deep dive12:00 planned
Failure8:00 planned
0:00
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.