Portfolio ↗

Quiz

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

5 questions in Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling.

  1. Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling advanced

    A 10-node cache tier running at a 92% hit rate is saturating CPU during a traffic peak. An engineer doubles it to 20 nodes on the same consistent-hashing ring. What happens over the next two minutes?

    3 min answer cachingconsistent-hashingscale-outstateful
  2. Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling intermediate

    A service is at capacity. When is vertical scaling the better answer than horizontal, and what is the trap in each direction?

    2 min answer unacademyscalingverticalhorizontal
  3. Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling advanced

    A stateful service runs on 16 large nodes, each holding a large in-memory working set. You must move to 200 small nodes under live traffic, for finer failure granularity and better bin-packing. Sequence the migration, and say what changes that nobody plans for.

    3 min answer scalingpartitioningcache hit ratefan-out
  4. Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling intermediate Multiple choice

    A workspace product's primary database is at its limits. Should it scale vertically, add replicas, or shard? What order and what evidence?

    2 min answer scalingverticalshardingreplicas
  5. Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling intermediate

    When is vertical scaling the better answer, and what makes horizontal inevitable eventually?

    2 min answer scalingverticalhorizontalavailability