How would you handle a sudden spike in traffic?
✅ Answer:
I would approach this in layers. In the short term, I would protect the system using rate limiting and load shedding to prevent total failure.
Next, I would ensure horizontal scaling behind a load balancer so additional instances can absorb the traffic. I would also introduce caching for frequently requested data and consider using a message queue to smooth traffic spikes.
Long term, I would analyze traffic patterns and redesign any bottlenecks to make the system more resilient to bursty workloads.