System designEasysd-g530

Subject PastebinLevel Entry–Mid~30 minCommon in Storage & CDN interviewsIndustries Software development, Technology

Question

Design a simple pastebin where a developer pastes a block of text or code, gets a unique link, and others can view it read-only. Pastes can be up to ~1 MB, some are set to expire after a day or a week, and the service handles a few thousand pastes per day. It is read-heavy — each paste is viewed many more times than it is created. Cover components, storage, and how expiration works.

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

Narrate your design

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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.