Beginner LevelSystem Design & Architecture
What is Latency vs Throughput and how do SLA/SLO performance targets work?
❓ Interview Prompt: Explain Latency (duration per request), Throughput (requests per second), Percentiles ($p50, p95, p99$), SLA, and SLO metrics.
Measuring system performance parameters:
•
Latency: The time taken to process a single request from client invocation to response receipt (e.g. $45\text{ms}$).
•
Throughput: The volume of work or requests the system can process per unit of time (e.g. $10,000\text{ Requests Per Second - RPS}$).
•
Percentiles ($p95, p99$): $p99$ latency represents the worst $1\%$ of requests. Never rely on average latency!
•
SLO (Service Level Objective): Target performance bound (e.g. $p99 \text{ Latency} < 200\text{ms}$).
Code Implementation Example
typescript
// Measuring p99 Latency & Throughput in OpenTelemetry
const startTime = performance.now();
await processRequest();
const duration = performance.now() - startTime;
metrics.histogram('http_request_duration_ms', duration);💡Tracking request duration metrics for p99 latency SLO evaluation.
🎯 Interview Key Takeaway
Target latency percentiles (p95, p99) rather than averages to ensure acceptable performance for all users.
#System Design#Latency#Throughput#SLO#Beginner
Back to all System Design & Architecture Questions→