Grokking Modern System Design Interview

Design of a Distributed Logging Service

We'll cover the following...

Requirements
- Functional requirements
- Non-functional requirements
Building blocks we will use
API design
- Write a message
- Search log
Initial design
Logging at various levels
- In a server
- At the data center level
Conclusion

We will design a distributed logging system to capture all activities and messages. We will not incorporate sampling in this design.

Requirements

Let’s list the requirements for designing a distributed logging system:

Functional requirements

Writing logs: Services within the distributed system must be able to write to the logging system.
Searchable logs: Users must be able to search logs effortlessly and track the application flow end to end.
Storing logs: Logs must reside in distributed storage for easy access.
Centralized logging visualizer: The system must provide a unified view of globally distributed services.

Non-functional requirements

Low latency: Logging is an I/O-intensive operation. It must not block the application’s critical path.
Scalability: The system must handle increasing log volumes and a growing number of concurrent users.
Availability: The logging system must be highly available. ... ...