.NET Architecture & System Design Interview Question #9

What is reliability?

Architecture Fundamentals, Scalability, Availability & Performance Junior Beginner

Quick Interview Answer

Reliability is the ability of a system to perform correctly and consistently over time under stated conditions. A service can be available but unreliable if it frequently returns incorrect results.

Detailed Explanation

Reliability is the ability of a system to perform correctly and consistently over time under stated conditions. A service can be available but unreliable if it frequently returns incorrect results.

Reliability design includes failure handling, data integrity, retries where safe, idempotency, validation, redundancy, testing, and operational monitoring.

Code Example

Available but wrong result
!= reliable

Reliable system:
correctness + consistency + failure handling