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2988 questions of the kind that actually get asked — in interviews, in architecture review boards, and by the person who has to run the thing at 3 AM. Every answer states the trade-off rather than the slogan, and says when the obvious choice is the wrong one.

All areas2988 Architecture Fundamentals91 Distributed Systems111 Data Architecture100 Cloud Architecture97 Networking96 API & Integration Architecture97 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 Performance & Capacity Engineering100 Security Architecture105 Cost Architecture & FinOps102 Business Architecture103 Architecture Communication102 Enterprise Architecture100 Legacy Modernization102 AI-Era Architecture106 Software Architecture & Engineering93 Architecture Patterns94 Architecture Decision-Making101 The Architect's Meta-Skills102 Delivery & Release Engineering103 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience102 Testing & Quality Architecture102 Data Platform Architecture98 Streaming & Real-Time Data103 Data Governance & Semantics91 Frontend & Experience Architecture101 Edge, Mobile & IoT98 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture99 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

4 questions in Total Cost of Ownership.

  1. Total Cost of Ownership advanced

    A colocation contract prices space by provisioned power per rack rather than by server count. A proposal replaces 200 general-purpose servers with 40 accelerator servers - a fivefold cut in machine count - while tripling the power each rack draws. What does the team gain, what does it pay, and when does that bill arrive?

    3 min answer tcocolocationpowerdensity
  2. Total Cost of Ownership advanced

    A company evaluating whether to move a workload off public cloud computes a lower monthly infrastructure bill for owned hardware. Which costs does that comparison typically omit?

    2 min answer tcorepatriationhidden-costscapex
  3. Total Cost of Ownership advanced

    A platform team spends about 11% of its engineering capacity staying portable - an internal interface over the managed queue, nightly exports of vendor-held data, and an annual paper exit. Finance asks what that buys. What has the team actually purchased, and when is paying for it irrational?

    2 min answer tcolock-inoptionalityprocurement
  4. Total Cost of Ownership advanced

    Google published its video coding unit at ASPLOS 2021 and reported 20x to 33x better compute efficiency than a well-tuned software baseline for workloads including YouTube transcoding. Custom silicon costs years and a team. What cost model justifies that decision, and where would copying it be a mistake?

    2 min answer youtubecustom-silicontcobuild-vs-buy