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

1. Video Upload: Enabling users to upload their videos to the platform.

2. Video Viewing: Allowing users to access and view uploaded videos.

3. Quality Adjustment: Providing options for users to adjust video quality.

4. Metric Tracking: Keeping track of essential video metrics such as likes, dislikes, comments, and view counts.

Non-Functional Requirements

1. Speedy Upload & Smooth Streaming: Ensuring fast video uploading and a seamless streaming experience for users.

2. High Availability & Scalability: Prioritizing system availability and scalability while being willing to compromise some consistency for availability.

3. Low Latency & High Throughput: Minimizing latency and ensuring high data throughput.

4. 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.

1. User Base Estimation: Assuming a user base of around 2 billion.

2. Daily Active Users: Approximately 400 million.

3. Videos Watched Per User/Day: Estimated at 5 videos.

4. Daily Video Uploads: Anticipating about 20 million video uploads per day.

5. Storage Requirements: Projected storage needs of approximately 2 PB per day (excluding compression and replication).

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