Design a metrics collection and alerting system

Q: Design a metrics collection and alerting system

This question evaluates system design competencies such as scalable time-series data modeling, ingestion and storage architecture, query latency versus retention trade-offs, and alert evaluation logic within the System Design domain.

Q: How do I approach System Design interview questions?

System Design questions require understanding of core concepts and practice. PracHub provides solutions with explanations to help you master system design interviews.

Question

Design a metrics collection and alerting system (like a simplified monitoring platform).

Functional requirements:

Collect time-series metrics from many services/hosts (e.g., counters, gauges, timers).
Support near real-time querying/dashboards (low-latency queries over recent data).
Support offline/analytical queries over long time ranges (heavier aggregations, historical analysis).
Support alerting : user-defined rules (e.g., threshold, rate of change) with notifications.

Non-functional requirements:

High write throughput, horizontal scalability, high availability.
Handle spikes, backpressure, and partial failures.
Reasonable multi-tenancy and access control.

Provide an end-to-end architecture, key data models, storage choices, and how alert evaluation works. Discuss tradeoffs (e.g., Lambda/Kappa style), retention, and handling high-cardinality metrics.

Design a metrics collection and alerting system

Quick Overview

Solution

Comments (0)