Part 3: Caching Strategies, Redis/Valkey & Stampede Prevention

← Previous Chapter: Part 2: L4/L7 Load Balancing & API Gateways | Series Hub: System Design Masterclass | Next Chapter: Part 4: Database Scaling, Sharding & Distributed SQL → Prerequisite: Read Part 2: L4/L7 Load Balancing, API Gateways & eBPF Routing to understand edge ingress distribution before designing the cache hierarchy. Answer-first: Production caching in Go couples in-memory L1 caches with distributed Redis or Valkey clusters to shield relational databases. Employing the XFetch probabilistic early expiration algorithm alongside Go Singleflight deduplication completely eliminates thundering herd stampedes, while scalable Bloom filters prevent cache penetration, maintaining sub-millisecond P99 response times under 200,000 requests per second. ...

Chapter 2: The 3 Caching Vulnerabilities (Penetration, Breakdown, Avalanche) & Go Singleflight

Answer-first: Mitigating caching vulnerabilities at scale requires a multi-layered defense against three fatal failure modes: cache penetration is eliminated using Bloom filters and null-object caching; cache avalanche is prevented by injecting randomized TTL jitter and asynchronous background warming; and cache breakdown is solved using Go singleflight to coalesce thousands of duplicate concurrent requests into a single database query. Prerequisite: Advanced understanding of memory caching hierarchies (L1 in-process vs L2 distributed clusters), probabilistic data structures (Bloom and Cuckoo filters), Go synchronization primitives, and database connection pool behavior is assumed for this chapter. ...