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System designHardsd-p054
Subject Queues streamingLevel Senior–Staff~45 minCommon in Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology

Question

Design a distributed publish/subscribe log (like Kafka) that durably stores ordered streams and lets many consumers read at their own pace.

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.