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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. Reliability & Resilience intermediate

    A team is launching a new service and asks what its SLO should be. How do you help them decide, and why is "99.99%" usually the wrong first answer?

    2 min answer slosreerror-budgetreliability
  2. Reliability & Resilience advanced

    In July 2019 a single regex deployed globally took Cloudflare's network to 100% CPU within seconds. What does this say about how configuration should be released?

    2 min answer deploymentblast-radiusconfigcase-study
  3. Reliability & Resilience advanced

    Maersk rebuilt roughly 4,000 servers and 45,000 PCs in about ten days after NotPetya in 2017, and recovered its directory only because one data centre had been offline during the attack. What does this say about DR design?

    2 min answer disaster-recoveryransomwarebackupcase-study
  4. Reliability & Resilience intermediate

    The business asks for "100% uptime" for a new customer portal. Walk me through the conversation that ends in an agreed SLO.

    3 min answer slisloslanegotiation
  5. Replication advanced

    Users report seeing stale data intermittently. Replication lag is normally under a second but spikes to minutes twice a day. How do you handle it?

    2 min answer replicationlagroutingconsistency
  6. Resilience Testing advanced

    A brief database slowdown caused a two-hour full outage. Explain the likely amplification chain and the fixes at each stage.

    2 min answer cascading-failureretriestimeoutsincident
  7. REST Design advanced

    A new platform must serve a public partner API, three internal front-ends with different data needs, and high-volume service-to-service traffic. Choose the API styles and defend the choice.

    2 min answer restgraphqlgrpcapi-strategy
  8. Saga advanced

    An order spans payment, inventory and shipping, each in its own service with its own database. How do you keep them consistent?

    3 min answer sagaconsistencycompensationoutbox
  9. Sagas & Compensation advanced

    In an order saga, the shipment service permanently rejects an order after the card has been captured. What now?

    2 min answer sagacompensationpivotexceptions
  10. Secrets Management advanced

    An estate has database passwords in environment variables across 200 services. Design the migration to a secrets manager.

    2 min answer secretsmigrationworkload-identityrotation
  11. Secure API Design advanced

    You are reviewing a new public API before launch. What do you check, in priority order?

    2 min answer api-securityowaspreviewauthorization
  12. Security Architecture advanced

    Equifax was breached in 2017 through a vulnerability with a patch available two months earlier. Beyond "patch faster", what architectural and governance failures does that imply?

    2 min answer complianceprivacyvulnerability-managementcase-study