System Design Interview - Chapter 7 - Design a Unique ID Generator in Distributed Systems

Generating unique ID seems to be a simple task, but it is not in a high-load distributed systems!

This topic consists of:

• Understanding the requirements and why it is a complicated task
• Possible solutions:
  • Multi-master replication
  • Universally unique identifier (UUID)
  • Ticket server
  • Twitter SNOWFLAKE approach (seems to be the best one!)
• Details:
  • Timestamp
  • Sequence number
• Other issues
  • Clock synchronization
  • Section length tuning
  • High availability

These items are disclosed in a very interesting Chapter 7 of the book:

“System Design Interview – An insider’s guide” by Alex Xu

HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

Sharing my mind map with all the details as usual:

Download full mind map (PDF)