It's fun to read about how all the services work together. There are definitely a lot of concepts I have never heard of, and I even doubt they will come up in interviews. So the title of the book is definitely for marketing purposes. A more fitting title would be something like, A General Look at Cloud Services.
The texts are very large, and a lot of it is repetitive. There are a few graphs and diagrams (that take up a good chunk of the page) that could be left out and no information would have been lost.
It's a little sparse for the price, which is getting closer to textbooks but doesn't contain the same level of information.
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System Design Interview – An Insider's Guide: Volume 2 Paperback – March 11 2022
Purchase options and add-ons
System Design Interview - An Insider's Guide (Volume 2)
This book can be seen as a sequel to the book: System Design Interview - An Insider’s Guide. It covers a different set of system design interview questions and solutions. Although reading Volume 1 is helpful, it is not required. This book should be accessible to readers who have a basic understanding of distributed systems.
This volume provides a reliable strategy and knowledge base for approaching a broad range of system design questions that you may encounter. It will help you feel confident during this important interview. This book provides a step-by-step framework for how to tackle a system design question. It also includes many real-world examples to illustrate a systematic approach, with detailed and well-explained steps you can follow.
What’s inside?
- An insider’s take on what interviewers really look for and why.
- A 4-step framework for solving any system design interview question.
- 13 real system design interview questions with detailed solutions.
- 300+ diagrams to visually explain how different systems work.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Proximity Service
Chapter 2: Nearby Friends
Chapter 3: Google Maps
Chapter 4: Distributed Message Queue
Chapter 5: Metrics Monitoring
Chapter 6: Ad Click Event Aggregation
Chapter 7: Hotel Reservation
Chapter 8: Distributed Email Service
Chapter 9: S3-like Object Storage
Chapter 10: Real-time Gaming Leaderboard
Chapter 11: Payment System
Chapter 12: Digital Wallet
Chapter 13: Stock Exchange
This book can be seen as a sequel to the book: System Design Interview - An Insider’s Guide. It covers a different set of system design interview questions and solutions. Although reading Volume 1 is helpful, it is not required. This book should be accessible to readers who have a basic understanding of distributed systems.
This volume provides a reliable strategy and knowledge base for approaching a broad range of system design questions that you may encounter. It will help you feel confident during this important interview. This book provides a step-by-step framework for how to tackle a system design question. It also includes many real-world examples to illustrate a systematic approach, with detailed and well-explained steps you can follow.
What’s inside?
- An insider’s take on what interviewers really look for and why.
- A 4-step framework for solving any system design interview question.
- 13 real system design interview questions with detailed solutions.
- 300+ diagrams to visually explain how different systems work.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Proximity Service
Chapter 2: Nearby Friends
Chapter 3: Google Maps
Chapter 4: Distributed Message Queue
Chapter 5: Metrics Monitoring
Chapter 6: Ad Click Event Aggregation
Chapter 7: Hotel Reservation
Chapter 8: Distributed Email Service
Chapter 9: S3-like Object Storage
Chapter 10: Real-time Gaming Leaderboard
Chapter 11: Payment System
Chapter 12: Digital Wallet
Chapter 13: Stock Exchange
- Print length434 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateMarch 11 2022
- Dimensions17.78 x 2.49 x 25.4 cm
- ISBN-101736049119
- ISBN-13978-1736049112
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Product details
- Publisher : Byte Code LLC (March 11 2022)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 434 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1736049119
- ISBN-13 : 978-1736049112
- Item weight : 500 g
- Dimensions : 17.78 x 2.49 x 25.4 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: #17,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4 in Web Services
- #7 in Computer Systems Analysis & Design (Books)
- #30 in Software Architecture
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Sahn Lam is a software engineer with decades of experience in building scalable systems at high-growth companies like Discord, Zynga, and NetApp. Twitter: @sahnlam
Alex Xu is an experienced software engineer and entrepreneur. Previously, he worked at Twitter, Apple and Zynga. He can be found online at linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-xu-a8131b11/) and twitter (@alexxubyte)
Customer reviews
4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
1,030 global ratings
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Top reviews
Top reviews from Canada
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Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 28, 2022
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Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 29, 2022
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The book quality is kinda meh. Especially, there's this weird purple gradient thing printed between pages. I mean all pages. However, we all know we shouldn't be judging a book by its cover. The content is great and very useful.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 24, 2022
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Classical book for modern distributed system design, love it!
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 28, 2022
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Really nice extension to the first part. Very informative and indepth designs. I would highly recommend to read this. Just cutting one star as received a few pages torn.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 26, 2022
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Amazingly well written book, but lacks digital version for note taking and preservability.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 16, 2022
Verified Purchase
Preview is in color, but the real book is black and white.
It will be better for the diagrams to be printed in color.
It will be better for the diagrams to be printed in color.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 25, 2022
Verified Purchase
Well written with clear high level architecture and all the necessary details. Not just good for interviews but also enjoy reading it to learn how various systems are designed
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 25, 2022
Verified Purchase
It is an excellent read for anyone looking to learn how large scale systems work. The authors done a great job in breaking down complex systems to small and digestible blocks. I really like the book!
Top reviews from other countries

David John
1.0 out of 5 stars
Fake version. Don't buy
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on August 26, 2022Verified Purchase
The book cover has the original author's name and book title but the pages are a pirated version of Lewis C Lin's book. Do not buy. The original book is not available in India yet.


David John
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on August 26, 2022
Images in this review


38 people found this helpful
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Aneel
1.0 out of 5 stars
The print and paper quality is pretty bad
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on September 4, 2022Verified Purchase
The print and paper quality is pretty bad. It feels like a photocopy and not a book.
most of the tables in the book are not legible at all.
most of the tables in the book are not legible at all.


Aneel
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on September 4, 2022
most of the tables in the book are not legible at all.
Images in this review

20 people found this helpful
Report

J.S.R.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great case studies, not so great for interview prep
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 8, 2022Verified Purchase
This book has a lot of amazingly detailed case studies of big scale systems. However, the detail each goes into is immense and I doubt you'll ever need this level of info for interviews, even at staff level. It can be overwhelming even, and won't give you a good feel for what is expected in an interview. I think it's worth going through if you have a lot of time, similar to DDIA, and for a bank of practice questions. If your time is more limited, than the classic grokking the design interview is probably a better value.

CSAY
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very useful for system design interviews notably at FAANGs
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 9, 2022Verified Purchase
This book and the second edition did help me out. There were some patterns that I learned and allowed me to answer questions from a system design interview at Google and also at other companies. Strongly recommend.

Romil Punetha
5.0 out of 5 stars
The coverage of this book is really good.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 17, 2022Verified Purchase
This book is far better than vol-1. Vol-1 is more beginner friendly, with some concepts before you begin the design. This is more advanced version and is better suited for experienced people.