I jumped straight into the video streaming pipeline and spent way too long on CDN and encoding before they nudged me toward user-facing features and scale requirements.
Start by clarifying the scope and requirements of Amazon Prime Video as a system design problem, focusing on core functionalities like video streaming, content delivery, and user personalization. Then, outline a high-level architecture covering key components such as CDN, microservices, and storage, and dive into trade-offs for scalability, reliability, and cost. Finally, discuss how to handle peak traffic, global distribution, and data consistency.
Pro tip: Emphasize the importance of adaptive bitrate streaming and global CDN strategy to ensure low-latency, high-quality video delivery, and mention how Amazon's existing infrastructure (e.g., AWS CloudFront) can be leveraged for cost efficiency and scalability.
Ask clarifying questions to understand functional and non-functional requirements, such as supported devices, expected scale, key features (streaming, recommendations, downloads), and constraints like budget or latency.
Sketch a high-level design including client apps, API gateway, microservices for user management, content ingestion, recommendation engine, and a CDN for video delivery. Mention data stores like S3 for video storage and DynamoDB for metadata.
Elaborate on critical components: video encoding/transcoding pipeline, adaptive bitrate streaming (HLS/DASH), CDN caching strategy, and recommendation system using machine learning. Discuss how to handle user sessions and authentication.
Discuss scaling strategies (horizontal scaling, sharding, caching), fault tolerance (redundancy, multi-region deployment), and trade-offs between consistency, availability, and cost. Mention monitoring and auto-scaling.
Wrap up by summarizing the design, highlighting how it meets requirements, and suggest potential enhancements like edge computing, AI-driven personalization, or cost optimization.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.