All problems

Status Page

Hosted status pages — and the read storm that hits the moment they're needed most.

easy~12 min Pro Simulator · +80 ptsTheory +35 pts
The build

Keep status pages loading fast and always-on the moment a customer's outage sends everyone to check.

A status page sits idle almost all the time — until the customer behind it goes down, and every one of their users hits refresh at once. The read storm arrives in the exact same second as the thing it's reporting on, so the page can't lean on the origin it's describing.

Components in play

  • Edge CDNServes the current page state straight from the edge.
  • Status APIRenders component + incident state for a page.
  • Status cacheKeeps the latest page render in memory between updates.
  • Incident storeSource of truth for components and incident history.

Graded on these SLOs

  • ≥ 98.00%Pages load
  • ≤ 120 msPage load p99
  • ≥ 4.5k rpsSustain the read storm
  • ≤ 85%Headroom
  • ≤ 6Lean footprint
Base 4,500 rps42s run 3 scripted failures

The brief

Design a hosted status-page service like Statuspage or Instatus. Companies embed a public page showing the health of their components; when something breaks, the company (or the system) flips an incident, and the page updates. The page sits nearly idle almost all the time — until the customer behind it goes down, at which point every one of their users hammers refresh in the same second.

Functional

  • Show current component status + incident history for a customer's page
  • Post/update an incident and reflect it on the page quickly
  • Serve many independent customer pages from one platform

Non-functional

  • Read-heavy, and reads spike hardest exactly when the underlying service is already having a bad day
  • High availability — a status page that's down when you need it is the worst possible look
  • Updates should show up in seconds, not minutes

Warm-up: design decisions

Optional theory to prime the calls a senior engineer would make before you build.

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