Distributed Cache System Design

Use this exercise to defend a cache design under changing load and failures. Work from the cache model developed in the preceding lessons: a backing store, service hosts, a client library, sharded cache nodes, and optional replicas.

The scenario

A hypothetical application repeatedly reads objects from a database. The database handles normal traffic, but bursts of requests for popular objects raise latency. Some cached values may be briefly stale; other values must be invalidated promptly after an update. Define which data belongs in each category before drawing the cache.

Build and test the design