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Abhay Singh Kathayat
Abhay Singh Kathayat

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Master Memcached: 100 Advanced Interview Questions for Senior Developers

Basics of Memcached

  1. What is Memcached, and why is it used?
  2. How does Memcached work?
  3. Explain the key features of Memcached.
  4. What type of data structures are supported in Memcached?
  5. How does Memcached store data in memory?
  6. What are common use cases of Memcached in web applications?
  7. Compare Memcached and Redis.
  8. What are the advantages of using Memcached?
  9. What are the limitations of Memcached?
  10. How does Memcached achieve high performance?

Core Concepts

  1. What is a cache miss in Memcached?
  2. What is a cache hit, and how is it measured?
  3. Explain the Least Recently Used (LRU) eviction policy in Memcached.
  4. What is the maximum size of a key and value in Memcached?
  5. How does Memcached handle hashing?
  6. Explain the concept of slabs and chunks in Memcached.
  7. What is the binary protocol, and how does it differ from the text protocol?
  8. How are keys stored in Memcached?
  9. What happens when the memory limit is reached in Memcached?
  10. How does Memcached handle concurrent requests?

Performance Optimization

  1. How can you optimize Memcached for read-heavy workloads?
  2. How do you optimize Memcached for write-heavy workloads?
  3. What is connection pooling, and how does Memcached utilize it?
  4. What are the performance impacts of using large keys or values?
  5. How do you reduce latency in Memcached?
  6. What tools can be used to monitor Memcached performance?
  7. Explain the impact of network latency on Memcached.
  8. How does the slab allocator improve performance in Memcached?
  9. How do you identify hot keys in Memcached?
  10. What strategies can prevent cache stampede in Memcached?

Scaling and Clustering

  1. Can Memcached be used in a distributed environment? How?
  2. What is consistent hashing, and why is it important in Memcached?
  3. How do you scale Memcached in a cluster setup?
  4. Explain node addition and removal in a Memcached cluster.
  5. How does Memcached handle load balancing?
  6. What happens if a node fails in a distributed Memcached setup?
  7. How do you manage replication in Memcached?
  8. What are the trade-offs of using multiple nodes in Memcached?
  9. What is sharding, and how is it implemented in Memcached?
  10. Can Memcached cluster handle fault tolerance? If yes, how?

Data Consistency and Expiry

  1. How does Memcached handle data consistency?
  2. What is the default expiration policy in Memcached?
  3. How do you set an expiration time for keys in Memcached?
  4. What happens when a key expires in Memcached?
  5. How does Memcached handle stale data?
  6. What is the impact of lazy expiration in Memcached?
  7. Can Memcached guarantee strong consistency? Why or why not?
  8. How can you invalidate cached data in Memcached?
  9. What is the role of the flush_all command in Memcached?
  10. How does Memcached deal with inconsistent data across nodes?

Real-World Use Cases

  1. How would you use Memcached to improve the performance of a web application?
  2. Describe how Memcached is used in session storage.
  3. How does Memcached help in database query caching?
  4. Can Memcached be used as a message queue? Why or why not?
  5. What are the best practices for using Memcached in a microservices architecture?
  6. How does Memcached handle frequent writes in a high-traffic application?
  7. What are the trade-offs of using Memcached in e-commerce platforms?
  8. How would you implement rate limiting using Memcached?
  9. What is a common use case for Memcached in social media platforms?
  10. How do you use Memcached for content delivery network (CDN) caching?

Security and Authentication

  1. How does Memcached handle security?
  2. What is SASL authentication, and how is it configured in Memcached?
  3. How do you secure Memcached in a production environment?
  4. Can Memcached be used over SSL/TLS connections?
  5. What are the risks of running Memcached in an open network?
  6. How do you restrict unauthorized access to Memcached?
  7. How do you monitor for potential security breaches in Memcached?
  8. What is the impact of DDOS attacks on Memcached?
  9. What are best practices for securing Memcached in cloud environments?
  10. How do you enable firewall rules for Memcached?

Troubleshooting and Debugging

  1. What tools can you use to debug Memcached performance issues?
  2. How do you identify and resolve high latency in Memcached?
  3. What are the common causes of cache miss in Memcached?
  4. How do you monitor key expiry and cache utilization?
  5. What happens when Memcached runs out of memory?
  6. How do you resolve connection timeouts in Memcached?
  7. What are slab allocation issues, and how do you address them?
  8. How do you analyze Memcached logs?
  9. What is the impact of frequent evictions on performance?
  10. How do you handle OOM (Out of Memory) errors in Memcached?

Advanced Concepts

  1. How do you implement multi-tenancy in Memcached?
  2. What is the role of memcachedb, and how does it differ from Memcached?
  3. How do you integrate Memcached with Docker and Kubernetes?
  4. What is the role of Memcached clients, and how do they work?
  5. Explain how compression can be applied to data in Memcached.
  6. How do you handle cross-datacenter replication with Memcached?
  7. What are the differences between Memcached and Hazelcast?
  8. Can Memcached support transactional operations? If yes, how?
  9. What is the impact of serialization/deserialization on Memcached performance?
  10. How does Memcached integrate with modern frameworks like Django or Spring?

Future and Trends

  1. What are the recent enhancements in Memcached?
  2. How does Memcached compare to other modern caching systems?
  3. What are emerging use cases for Memcached in AI/ML workflows?
  4. How does Memcached handle serverless architectures?
  5. What improvements would you suggest for Memcached?
  6. What is the role of Memcached in edge computing?
  7. Can Memcached support time-series data efficiently?
  8. How does Memcached handle data compression and deduplication?
  9. What are some open-source alternatives to Memcached?
  10. How does Memcached adapt to distributed cloud environments?

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