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Phase 5 Interactive Simulator

Consistent Hashing Ring Simulator 🎯

Visualize how consistent hashing moves only K/N keys during cluster scale-up/down.

HASH RING0 → 2³²-1Clockwise Routing
Virtual Nodes (vNodes):

Node Key Distribution (6 Total Keys)

Server A (us-east)(45°)
3 keys (50%)
Server B (eu-central)(160°)
2 keys (33%)
Server C (ap-south)(280°)
1 keys (17%)
EVENT LOG:

› Initialized ring with 3 physical nodes and 6 keys.

PHASE 5 CURRICULUM

Databases: Scaling & Distribution

Progress0 of 18 (0%)

When single-node database capacity is reached, systems must scale across distributed clusters.

Key Architectural Domains & Syllabus
Phase 5 covers database replication (Primary-Replica, Synchronous vs Asynchronous vs Semi-Sync, Multi-Primary Active-Active)
horizontal sharding architectures
sharding key design
sharding vs partitioning vs replication
shard rebalancing
Consistent Hashing with virtual nodes
read/write splitting proxies (ProxySQL/Pgpool)
database connection pooling (PgBouncer/HikariCP)
zero-downtime schema migrations (gh-ost)
backup strategies & PITR
Change Data Capture (CDC with Debezium and Kafka)
database federation
Time-Series databases (TimescaleDB/InfluxDB)
search indexes (Elasticsearch/Lucene)
Vector databases (Pinecone/pgvector/HNSW)
Polyglot Persistence architectures
18 In-Depth Topics ~144 Minutes Reading Time Interactive Quizzes & Assessments

All Topics in Phase 5

0 of 18 completed

Scale read capacity and provide disaster recovery: Primary-Replica topology, WAL streaming, replication lag, replica promotion, and split-brain prevention.

9 min read•2 Quiz Questions

Navigate the replication durability spectrum: Zero data loss (RPO=0) with Sync vs Maximum throughput with Async vs Balanced Semi-Synchronous replication.

9 min read•2 Quiz Questions

Scale write capacity across geographic regions: Active-Active topologies, write conflicts, Last-Write-Wins (LWW), Vector Clocks, and CRDTs (Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types).

9 min read•2 Quiz Questions

Scale database write capacity infinitely: Splitting monolithic tables into independent physical database instances (Shards), Shard Keys, and cross-shard join challenges.

9 min read•2 Quiz Questions

Compare the 4 primary sharding partitioning schemes: Range-Based, Hash-Based (Modulo/Consistent), Directory-Based (Lookup Table), and Geolocation-Based Sharding.

9 min read•2 Quiz Questions

Disentangle the 3 database scaling pillars: Vertical Partitioning (Column splitting), Table Partitioning (Single node), Sharding (Multi-node), and Replication (Duplication).

9 min read•2 Quiz Questions

Scale a live sharded cluster without downtime: Online data migration, dual-writing, CDC catchup, cutover switching, and shadow validation.

9 min read•2 Quiz Questions

Solve the N-node reshuffling problem: The 360° Hash Ring, O(K/N) key relocation on node failure/scaling, and Virtual Nodes (Vnodes) for uniform load balance.

9 min read•2 Quiz Questions

Route queries dynamically: Application-level splitting (Spring/TypeORM), Database proxies (ProxySQL, Pgpool-II), read lag pinning, and transaction routing.

8 min read•1 Quiz Questions

Prevent database connection exhaustion: Process-per-connection costs, PgBouncer (Session vs Transaction vs Statement pooling), and the Little's Law sizing formula.

8 min read•1 Quiz Questions

Alter massive tables without locking: The Expand/Contract pattern, shadow tables, binlog streaming, and preventing metadata locks.

9 min read•1 Quiz Questions

Design bulletproof recovery: Full vs Differential vs Incremental backups, Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) via WAL archiving, RPO (Data loss) vs RTO (Downtime).

8 min read•1 Quiz Questions

Stream database mutations in real time: Log-based CDC (Debezium/Kafka), Dual-write anti-patterns, cache invalidation, search index syncing, and Outbox Pattern.

9 min read•1 Quiz Questions

Partition databases by domain context: Separating Users DB, Billing DB, Catalog DB, cross-database joins, and foreign data wrappers (FDW).

7 min read•1 Quiz Questions

Ingest high-frequency metrics: Hypertables, Chunk partitioning, Downsampling, Rollup aggregates, Gorilla compression, and Retention policies.

8 min read•1 Quiz Questions

Explore full-text search: Inverted index mechanics, Tokenization, Stemming, Stop words, BM25 relevance scoring, and fuzzy n-gram autocomplete.

9 min read•1 Quiz Questions

Power modern AI & RAG systems: High-dimensional vector embeddings, Cosine Similarity, Approximate Nearest Neighbors (ANN), HNSW graph indexes, and hybrid search.

9 min read•1 Quiz Questions

The master architecture capstone: Synthesizing PostgreSQL (ACID), Redis (Cache), Cassandra (Time-series), Elasticsearch (Search), and S3 (Blob) into a cohesive distributed system.

10 min read•1 Quiz Questions