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Code RoomDistributed file system
HardPrep Room Coding #3708

Distributed file system

System designDatabases & SQLStorage & CDNSenior–Staff~45 min

Design a distributed file system for a data/analytics platform (GFS/HDFS-style) that backs large sequential reads. Constraints: files are mostly huge (GBs to TBs), write-once/append-mostly with concurrent appends, throughput matters more than latency, hundreds of PB across thousands of commodity nodes, and the system must tolerate frequent node failures. Cover the namespace, chunking, and replication.

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.