Design a Cloud File Storage Service
Company: Harvey
Role: Software Engineer
Category: System Design
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Onsite
Design a cloud file storage service similar to Google Drive.
The system should allow users to upload, download, organize, share, and manage files and folders across devices.
Focus on the following areas:
- File and folder hierarchy management.
- Uploading and downloading large files efficiently.
- Permission and access-control management for users and shared files.
- File metadata, versioning, and consistency.
- Security considerations, including authentication, authorization, encryption, abuse prevention, and data privacy.
- Scalability, reliability, and fault tolerance.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design scalable, secure distributed file storage systems, covering competencies in file and folder hierarchy management, efficient large-file transfer, access control and permissions, metadata and versioning, and reliability.