Cloud Storage
Object, block and file storage, and the access patterns each suits.
3 to work through
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intermediate
A design platform stores billions of user assets and rendered outputs, where a small fraction are accessed constantly and most are never accessed again after the first week. Design the storage architecture.
2 min answer -
intermediate Multiple choice
A product serves user-uploaded images in twelve renditions across devices. Precompute all renditions on upload or generate on demand and cache?
2 min answer -
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
4 terms in this topic
Block Storage
A virtual disk attached to one instance at a time, presented as raw blocks and formatted with a filesystem — the storage databases and stateful workl…
conceptCloud Storage
Object, block and file storage — with different durability, latency and cost models, and an egress bill that shapes architecture more than most desig…
conceptDurability vs Availability
Two different storage guarantees — whether data survives, and whether it can be reached right now — routinely conflated because both are quoted in nines.
practiceStorage Tiering
Placing objects in storage classes according to access probability, so cost tracks usage rather than volume.
Neighbouring topics
Cloud Architecture
General material on designing for cloud platforms.
Compute Models
Instances, containers and functions, and what each is priced and shaped for.
Cloud Databases
Managed relational, key-value, document and analytical services.
Containers
Images, registries, immutability and the deployment model they enable.
Kubernetes
The reconciliation loop, and whether the workload needs what it provides.
Serverless
Scale to zero, per-request billing, cold starts and connection limits.
Autoscaling
Signals, delays and bounds — and the maximum that caps a runaway bill.
Load Balancing
Distributing traffic, health checking, and removing failures from rotation.
Multi-Region Architecture
Surviving a region, and the data consistency price of doing so.
Availability Zones
The unit of correlated physical failure, and what zones do not protect against.
Disaster Recovery
Backup-restore, pilot light, warm standby and active-active postures.
Backup Strategies
Scope, immutability, separation, and the restore drill that makes it real.
Infrastructure as Code
Declarative infrastructure, drift, state files and rebuild-from-empty.
Landing Zones
A governed foundation of accounts, network, identity and guardrails.
Managed Services
Which operational responsibilities actually transfer, and which do not.
Cloud Migration
Per-application disposition, sequencing and the capability change underneath.
Multi-Cloud
Best-of-breed, portfolio and portable — three very different costs.
Edge Computing
Moving compute towards the user, and what cannot follow it.
Cloud Governance
Preventive policy, tagging, quotas and cost and security guardrails.