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Storage System Design Case Studies

10 Storage case studies from Microsoft with full breakdowns.

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Google Drive
16 min readStorageCDNDistributed Systems
Advanced▶ Mock
Web Crawler
15 min readDistributed SystemsStorageSearch
Advanced+2▶ Mock
Distributed Key-Value Store (DynamoDB / Cassandra)
7 min readDatabasesDistributed SystemsStorage
Advanced+2▶ Mock
Centralized Logging System (ELK / Splunk)
6 min readObservabilityData PipelinesSearch
Intermediate+1▶ Mock
Sorting a 500 GB CSV with 16 GB of RAM (External Merge Sort)
4 min readAlgorithmsStorageData Pipelines
Intermediate▶ Mock
IoT / Sensor Telemetry Pipeline
7 min readIoTData PipelinesStorage
Intermediate+1▶ Mock
REST APIs for JSON Document Storage
3 min readAPI DesignStorageDatabases
Beginner▶ Mock
Metrics Monitoring and Alerting System
7 min readObservabilityData PipelinesStorage
Advanced+3▶ Mock
Cloud Resource Change Tracking Database
3 min readDatabasesEvent DrivenStorage
Intermediate▶ Mock
URL Shortener (TinyURL / bit.ly)
7 min readDistributed SystemsCachingStorage
Beginner+4▶ Mock

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Storage in system design?

Storage is a core system design topic covered in 43 case studies on InterviewSkool. It appears frequently in FAANG interviews, especially at Google, Amazon, and Meta.

How should I prepare Storage for system design interviews?

Study the case studies above, focusing on architecture trade-offs, scale estimates, and API designs. Practice explaining your decisions aloud — this is exactly what interviewers evaluate.

Practice with a Mock Interview

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