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Quiz

174 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 areas174 Architecture Fundamentals5 Distributed Systems26 Data Architecture23 Cloud Architecture19 Networking17 API & Integration Architecture13 Reliability & Resilience9 Observability8 Performance & Capacity Engineering6 Security Architecture16 Cost Architecture & FinOps3 Business Architecture2 Architecture Communication2 Enterprise Architecture1 Legacy Modernization2 AI-Era Architecture3 Software Architecture & Engineering3 Architecture Patterns6 Architecture Decision-Making9 The Architect's Meta-Skills1
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

174 questions.

  1. Cloud Architecture intermediate Multiple choice

    A team wants to build a new internal API on serverless functions. It will serve steady traffic of about 200 requests per second during business hours. What do you advise?

    2 min answer serverlesscontainerscostdecision-making
  2. Cloud Architecture advanced

    In the 2017 AWS S3 outage, the status page could not report the outage because it depended on S3. What does that tell you about designing status and control systems?

    2 min answer blast-radiuscontrol-planedependenciescase-study
  3. Cloud Architecture advanced

    The business asks for "multi-region" after a regional outage. Before agreeing, what do you need to establish, and what are you actually signing up for?

    2 min answer multi-regiondrcostconsistency
  4. Cloud Databases intermediate Multiple choice

    A serverless API works in testing and fails under load with connection errors. The database is at 5% CPU. Explain and fix.

    2 min answer serverlessconnectionsproxyscaling
  5. Cloud Governance intermediate

    A DR test fails: the secondary region cannot launch enough instances. What happened, and what standing checks prevent it?

    2 min answer quotasdrgovernance
  6. Load Balancing intermediate

    Every deployment produces a small spike of 502s that the team has learned to ignore. Fix it.

    2 min answer drainingdeploymentgraceful-shutdown
  7. Cloud Migration advanced

    You are asked to lead a migration of 300 applications to cloud. What happens in the first ninety days?

    2 min answer migrationdiscoverysequencingwaves
  8. Cloud Storage intermediate

    Choose storage for four workloads: a Postgres data directory, user-uploaded images, a shared build cache, and seven years of audit records.

    2 min answer storageblockobjecttiering
  9. Architecture Communication intermediate

    In a design review, a respected senior engineer proposes an approach you believe is wrong. The room defers to them. How do you handle it?

    2 min answer communicationdisagreementinfluencereview
  10. Architecture Communication beginner

    You have designed a system. Explain the same architecture to a CEO, an engineering manager and an engineer. What changes?

    2 min answer communicationstakeholdersinfluence
  11. Compliance Frameworks advanced

    PCI DSS assessment covers 40 systems and costs a fortune annually. How would you reduce that architecturally?

    2 min answer pciscopetokenisationcompliance
  12. Compute Models intermediate

    A fleet of 200 instances averages 15% CPU and 85% memory. Finance wants a 40% cost reduction. What do you do?

    2 min answer rightsizinginstance-familycost