Design a replicated key-value store with quorums

Q: Design a replicated key-value store with quorums

This question evaluates understanding of replication, quorum protocols, data partitioning, consistency models, failure detection and recovery, and conflict resolution in distributed key–value stores.

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Question

Design a distributed system that replicates key–value pairs across multiple replicas.

The interviewer wants to focus on replication, quorums, and failure handling.

Specify:

APIs (e.g., Get(key) , Put(key, value) ), consistency goals, and assumptions.
How data is partitioned and replicated.
Quorum read/write rules (e.g., N/R/W) and how they affect consistency/availability.
How you detect and recover from bad nodes, network partitions, and replica lag.
Handling conflicts (if writes can be concurrent).

Keep it high-level but concrete enough to reason about correctness and trade-offs.

Design a replicated key-value store with quorums

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