Code Room
System designHard
Question
Design the correlation layer of a unified observability platform that ties together the three signals — metrics, logs, and traces — so that from a spike on a latency metric an engineer can jump to the exact traces behind that spike and the logs for those traces, in seconds. The three signals live in three different stores with different data models and retention. Design the linking model, the query flow, and how you keep correlation cheap and reliable without forcing all three into one store.
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.
Learn the concepts
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