Operations 28 min read

How Do Projects Achieve High Availability Without Multi‑Site Active‑Active? – A Meituan Interview Question

The article analyzes high‑availability concepts, from single‑machine risks to multi‑site active‑active architectures, compares cold and hot backup strategies, discusses network latency challenges, and presents Ele.me’s cell‑based, sharding‑driven multi‑region solution with concrete examples, tables, and code snippets.

Tech Freedom Circle
Tech Freedom Circle
Tech Freedom Circle
How Do Projects Achieve High Availability Without Multi‑Site Active‑Active? – A Meituan Interview Question

Latency Comparison (Beijing‑Shanghai vs. Intra‑DC)

L1 cache reference ......................... 0.5 ns
Branch mispredict ............................ 5 ns
L2 cache reference ........................... 7 ns
Mutex lock/unlock ........................... 25 ns
Main memory reference ...................... 100 ns
Compress 1K bytes with Zippy ............. 3,000 ns = 3 µs
Send 2K bytes over 1 Gbps network ....... 20,000 ns = 20 µs
SSD random read ........................ 150,000 ns = 150 µs
Read 1 MB sequentially from memory ..... 250,000 ns = 250 µs
Round trip within same datacenter ...... 500,000 ns = 0.5 ms
Read 1 MB sequentially from SSD* ..... 1,000,000 ns = 1 ms
Shanghai intra‑city network latency........ 1,000,000 ns = 1 ms
Disk seek ........................... 10,000,000 ns = 10 ms
Read 1 MB sequentially from disk .... 20,000,000 ns = 20 ms
Beijing‑Shanghai network latency.................... 30,000,000 ns = 30 ms
Send packet CA‑>Netherlands‑>CA .... 150,000,000 ns = 150 ms
shardinghigh availabilitydisaster recoverydata replicationmulti-site active-activecell-based architecture
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