Without looking, name the 7 layers and at least 3 components from each layer. For the components you cannot recall, state what function they serve.
A system has: DNS, a load balancer, three application servers, a primary database, and a read replica. List the components from the 26-component framework that are absent from this system. For each absent component, state the risk it creates.
The Vector Database (IC19) was added to the framework specifically for AI system requirements. Explain why the existing Storage Layer components were insufficient. What does the Vector Database do that a Search Index (IC18) cannot do well?
You are designing an analytics pipeline from scratch. Start with the minimum viable set of the 26 components — the smallest arrangement that allows data to flow from source to dashboard with acceptable reliability. Name each component and explain why it is required.
An outage post-mortem reveals that the team did not know which requests were slow until two hours after the incident started, because they had no distributed tracing. Which component was absent? Now identify two other components whose absence commonly causes similar “blindness” patterns and explain why.
Concept: F8 — The 26 Infrastructure Components
Thread: T8 (Divide & Conquer) ← System decomposition (Book 1, Ch 20) → Architecture vocabulary (Book 4, all chapters)
Core Idea: Twenty-six building blocks — from DNS and CDN through databases and stream processors to observability and orchestration — are the vocabulary of production system design. Every production system is an arrangement of a subset of these components. Know what each does, what it guarantees, and what breaks if it is absent.
Tradeoff: Generality vs Specialisation (F4 #6) — most components have a specialised alternative that is better for one use case (e.g., NoSQL vs SQL, search index vs relational query); the tradeoff between operational complexity and performance determines which to choose
Failure Mode: FM1 (SPOF) — the most common source of SPOFs is a component without a redundancy configuration; the 26 components are the checklist for finding them
Signal: Designing a new system; reviewing an existing system; debugging a production incident where you need to understand what a component does and what breaks without it
Maps to: Reference Book Ch 10 (F6 Archetypes — each archetype has a characteristic component set); Book 3 (each infrastructure pattern chapter corresponds to one or more of these 26 components)