Given a hard drive with one terabyte of data, arranged in 2^32 key/value pairs, where the keys and values each have lengths of 128 bytes, you need to design, build, and deploy (by yourself) a system that lets you look up the value for a given key, over the internet, at a peak rate of 5000 lookups per second. The data never changes. Let’s design that system.
Additionally:
- you will have only 2 week until launch
- no SSD (this question is from pre-SSD era)
- how is your solution going to fail?
Possible answers: Not specified (open question)
Source: http://skife.org/interviews/design/2010/10/27/favorite-interview-question.html
Possible answers: Not specified (open question)