Is this a video course?

No. This is an interactive, slide-based learning platform. Each lesson has rich text, animated diagrams, live code editors, and quizzes. You learn by reading, interacting, and doing, not by watching videos passively.

How long do I have access?

Forever. Both pricing tiers are one-time payments with lifetime access. This includes all current 766 lessons and any future content we add.

What level of experience do I need?

None. We start from absolute basics like 'What is latency?' and build up to distributed consensus protocols. The Foundation level assumes zero prior knowledge of system design.

How much does the system design course cost?

7.99 US dollars for lifetime access globally, or 499 Indian rupees for lifetime access in India. One-time payment, no subscription, no hidden fees. 11 lessons are free with no signup required.

What technologies are covered?

Everything from DNS and load balancers to Kubernetes, Kafka, distributed databases, consensus protocols, stream processing, security architecture, and observability. We cover principles and real-world implementations used at Netflix, Google, Amazon, Uber, Stripe, and more.

Is this useful for system design interview preparation?

Yes. The lessons are structured around the exact topics asked in system design interviews at FAANG and top-tier companies. Interactive diagrams help you practice whiteboard-style explanations. Covers everything from URL shortener design to distributed payment systems.

How is this different from ByteByteGo or Educative?

766 interactive lessons (4x more than most competitors), 16 different diagram types that build step by step, real production examples from Netflix, Google, Amazon, Uber, and Stripe, and lifetime access for a one-time payment of $7.99 instead of annual subscriptions costing 100 to 200 dollars per year.

Your P99 latency spiked. Metrics show it's the checkout endpoint. What observability pillar do you use next?

Traces, look at individual slow checkout requests to see which downstream service is the bottleneck, Metrics told you what (checkout latency spike). Traces are the natural next step because they show you where, which service in the checkout flow is slow. Once you identify the slow service via traces, you go to that service's logs to understand why. Metrics -> Traces -> Logs is the most common investigation flow.

Which statement best describes the difference between monitoring and observability?

Monitoring answers predefined questions (known-unknowns); observability lets you investigate arbitrary questions about system behavior (unknown-unknowns), Monitoring is about checking things you expect might go wrong, predefined alerts and dashboards. Observability is about being able to ask any question about your system's behavior, even ones you've never asked before. It requires richer telemetry (high-cardinality data, correlated signals) that supports ad-hoc investigation.

You have excellent metrics and logs but no distributed tracing. What specific debugging scenario becomes very difficult?

Understanding how a single request flows across 12 microservices and where the latency is accumulating, Without traces, understanding the path of a single request through multiple services requires manually correlating logs and metrics across services, which is extremely tedious and error-prone. Traces give you a single view of the entire request journey, with timing for each service hop, making cross-service latency debugging straightforward.

Observability Overview

Name: System Design Masterclass
Availability: InStock

in Observability Monitoring

This lesson is part of the full System Design Masterclass. Unlock it along with 765 other lessons for a one-time payment.

One-time payment. Lifetime access. No subscription.

Global

$19.99$7.99/lifetime

One-time payment via PayPal

Get Lifetime Access

Foundation lessons free, try before you buy

Founders price, locked for the first 10,000 customers

India Special

India

₹999₹499/lifetime

One-time via UPI, cards, or net banking

Get Lifetime Access

Foundation lessons free, try before you buy

Founders price, locked for the first 10,000 customers

“The interactive diagrams alone are worth way more than the price.”

Anish K., Senior Engineer at a Bengaluru startup

All 766 interactive lessons

Step-by-step animated diagrams

Live code editors with real execution

Quizzes with instant feedback

Completion certificates per level

Lifetime access, all future content included

The first 5 Foundation lessons are free, no payment needed. Try them now