Interview(DSA+SD) Prep Series Part:-2
Designing a Scalable System for Video Streaming: Building a Minimalistic YouTube
In today's digital age, video streaming platforms like YouTube have become an integral part of our online experience. Behind their seemingly effortless operation lies a complex infrastructure that ensures seamless video uploading, storage, transcoding, and streaming, all while managing an enormous volume of user-generated content. Let's dive into the architectural considerations and key components needed to build a basic version of YouTube.
Key System Requirements
Building a basic YouTube platform involves understanding and catering to certain functional and non-functional requirements.
Functional Requirements
Video Upload: Enabling users to upload their videos to the platform.
Video Viewing: Allowing users to access and view uploaded videos.
Quality Adjustment: Providing options for users to adjust video quality.
Metric Tracking: Keeping track of essential video metrics such as likes, dislikes, comments, and view counts.
Non-Functional Requirements
Speedy Upload & Smooth Streaming: Ensuring fast video uploading and a seamless streaming experience for users.
High Availability & Scalability: Prioritizing system availability and scalability while being willing to compromise some consistency for availability.
Low Latency & High Throughput: Minimizing latency and ensuring high data throughput.
Cost-Efficiency: Optimizing the system to manage costs effectively.
Capacity Estimation and System Constraints
Understanding the scale and capacity requirements helps shape the system design and infrastructure decisions.
User Base Estimation: Assuming a user base of around 2 billion.
Daily Active Users: Approximately 400 million.
Videos Watched Per User/Day: Estimated at 5 videos.
Daily Video Uploads: Anticipating about 20 million video uploads per day.
Storage Requirements: Projected storage needs of approximately 2 PB per day (excluding compression and replication).
Here’s what you are missing
upcoming Most imp DSA questions with multiple solution and best approach
complete guide of system design
how to approach tech interview guide
unlock the best DSA and System design Cheat sheet
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Software Engineering Newsletter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.