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Cache/memory size calculation

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#1

In the design pastebin case, it says below that cache size should be 20% of the read size. I get the 20-80 rule but why read size? Isn’t write size what you are actually storing? Like you can read one entry 5 times, but you only need to store it once, right?

Memory estimates: We can cache some of the hot pastes that are frequently accessed. Following the 80-20 rule, meaning 20% of hot pastes generate 80% of traffic, we would like to cache these 20% pastes.
Since we have 5M read requests per day, to cache 20% of these requests, we would need:
0.2 * 5M * 10KB ~= 10 GB

Course: Grokking the System Design Interview - Learn Interactively
Lesson: Designing Pastebin - Grokking the System Design Interview

#2

Cache is used for read not write. Thanks to cache system responds to user or other layer faster - especially if requests are many times for same value (paste in that case). To not have replica of database assumption is that cache holds “hot” pastes. IMHO make no sense to write to cache and then fight with db synchronization.

Course: Grokking the System Design Interview - Learn Interactively
Lesson: Designing Pastebin - Grokking the System Design Interview

#3

Thanks! Your answer really helped!

#4

No problem but I hope that somebody else will confirm this or not :slight_smile: