Design a distributed key-value store

Q: Design a distributed key-value store

This question evaluates understanding of distributed systems concepts such as data partitioning, replication, consistency models, fault tolerance, scalability, rebalancing, leader election, and performance trade-offs in a key-value storage context.

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Question

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Scenario

Design a distributed key-value (KV) store.

Requirements

Functional

API:
- Get(key) -> value | not_found
- Put(key, value) (optionally with versioning)
- (Optional) Delete(key)
Support many machines; data must be partitioned.

Non-functional

High availability and fault tolerance (node failures).
Low latency reads/writes.
Define consistency target (e.g., strong vs eventual) and justify.
Handle rebalancing when nodes are added/removed.
Discuss how you’d do replication, leader election, and failure recovery.

Assume values are small-to-medium (e.g., <= 1 MB) and keys are strings.

Design a distributed key-value store

Quick Overview

Scenario

Requirements

Functional

Non-functional

Solution

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