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Quiz

179 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 areas179 Architecture Fundamentals5 Distributed Systems26 Data Architecture23 Cloud Architecture19 Networking17 API & Integration Architecture13 Reliability & Resilience9 Observability8 Performance & Capacity Engineering6 Security Architecture16 Cost Architecture & FinOps4 Business Architecture2 Architecture Communication3 Enterprise Architecture2 Legacy Modernization3 AI-Era Architecture3 Software Architecture & Engineering3 Architecture Patterns6 Architecture Decision-Making9 The Architect's Meta-Skills2
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

179 questions.

  1. Legacy Integration advanced

    A core mainframe system with no API supports nightly batch file exchange only. The business needs near-real-time order status. Design the integration.

    2 min answer legacycdcanti-corruption-layerstrangler
  2. Legacy Modernization advanced

    A 15-year-old monolith runs the core of the business. Leadership wants microservices. How do you approach it, and what would make you refuse?

    2 min answer stranglermodernizationmicroservicesrisk
  3. Legacy Modernization advanced

    TSB's 2018 core banking migration moved 1.9 million customers in a single weekend and failed publicly. What would you have required before approving that cutover?

    3 min answer migrationcutovertestingcase-study
  4. Layer 4 vs Layer 7 intermediate

    A service has widely varying request costs — most complete in 10 ms, some take 5 s. Under round robin some instances are overwhelmed while others idle. What do you change?

    2 min answer load-balancingalgorithmshealth-checks
  5. Load Shedding advanced

    One customer's batch job saturates a shared service and degrades everyone. Rate limiting them fixes it, until the next customer does the same. What is the structural answer?

    2 min answer multi-tenancyisolationadmission-controlfairness
  6. Load Shedding advanced

    Your service will exceed capacity by 30% during a known peak. Do you shed load or brown out, and how do you decide what goes first?

    2 min answer sheddingbrownoutdegradationprioritisation
  7. Load Testing advanced

    Your load tests pass consistently and production still falls over at peak. What is wrong with the tests?

    2 min answer load-testingworkload-modelstresssoak
  8. Managed Services advanced

    A team wants to self-manage Kafka on Kubernetes to save money against the managed service. Evaluate.

    2 min answer managed-servicestcooperations
  9. Messaging & Queues intermediate

    For each of these, choose a queue or a stream and justify it — order fulfilment tasks, an audit trail, cache invalidation, and rebuilding a search index.

    2 min answer queuesstreamsretentionreplay
  10. Meta-Skills intermediate

    You must choose a data store this week. The product team cannot tell you the expected query patterns or the growth rate. What do you do?

    2 min answer uncertaintyreversibilitydecision-making
  11. Modularity advanced

    A team is splitting a monolith into services. How do you decide where the boundaries go?

    3 min answer boundariescouplingcohesionconway
  12. Multi-Region Architecture advanced

    Leadership asks for multi-region "for resilience". What do you establish before designing anything?

    2 min answer multi-regionrtorporequirements