Object Storage (S3, GCS) CDN (Cloudflare, Akamai) Flashcards
(31 cards)
What is object storage?
Object storage is a data storage architecture that manages data as objects rather than as files or blocks, suitable for storing large amounts of unstructured data.
What is Amazon S3?
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an object storage service by AWS designed for scalable, durable, and secure data storage.
What is Google Cloud Storage (GCS)?
Google Cloud Storage is a unified object storage service by Google Cloud for storing large amounts of data with global availability and built-in redundancy.
What are the advantages of object storage?
Advantages include virtually unlimited scalability, cost-effectiveness, high durability, and metadata tagging.
What are the disadvantages of object storage?
Disadvantages include higher latency compared to file/block storage and less suitability for high-performance transactional workloads.
What are best practices for object storage?
Use lifecycle policies, versioning, appropriate storage classes, and enforce access control policies.
What are common use cases for object storage?
Use cases include backups, media content, log storage, big data analytics, and static web hosting.
How does object storage impact system design?
It simplifies storage for unstructured data, decouples compute from storage, and allows horizontal scaling.
Give an example of object storage usage.
Storing user-uploaded images or videos in S3 for a photo-sharing application.
What are the architectural implications of using object storage?
Applications must handle eventual consistency, and direct file system operations are not possible.
How does object storage affect performance and fault tolerance?
Offers high durability and availability but has higher latency compared to local or block storage.
How do you monitor and debug object storage?
Track request metrics, error rates, latency, bucket policies, and access logs.
What are real-world tradeoffs of using object storage?
Tradeoffs include lower cost and high durability at the expense of access speed and transactional support.
What is a common interview question about object storage?
How would you design a video-sharing platform’s storage layer using S3 or GCS?
What is a potential gotcha in using object storage?
Assuming strong consistency or low latency can cause application bugs and performance issues.
What is a CDN?
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of servers that caches and delivers content closer to end users to reduce latency.
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a CDN and security provider offering services like DDoS protection, DNS, and edge caching.
What is Akamai?
Akamai is a global CDN provider known for delivering media, software downloads, and accelerating dynamic and static content.
What are the advantages of using a CDN?
Advantages include reduced latency, improved content availability, DDoS protection, and better user experience.
What are the disadvantages of using a CDN?
Disadvantages include potential cache staleness, added cost, and complexity in cache invalidation.
What are best practices when using a CDN?
Define proper caching headers, use versioned URLs, monitor cache hit ratios, and secure edge nodes.
What are common use cases for CDNs?
Use cases include serving static assets (images, CSS, JS), video streaming, API acceleration, and software distribution.
How does a CDN impact system design?
It offloads traffic from origin servers, reduces response times, and enhances scalability.
