Explain Multi-cloud vs Hybrid Cloud.

Example

An e-commerce site keeps payment data on-prem (compliance), scales front-end traffic in AWS, and analyzes customer behavior with GCP BigQuery.

Want to practice these trade-offs hands-on? Check out Grokking System Design Fundamentals, Grokking the Coding Interview, or book Mock Interviews with ex-FAANG engineers.

Why Is It Important

Choosing the right model impacts resilience, cost, compliance, and agility. Many FAANG interviewers test how you map requirements to cloud models.

Interview Tips

• Start with definitions.
• Map to constraints: compliance, cost, latency, control.
• Discuss identity, networking, observability, and failover.
• Wrap up with risks and trade-offs.

Trade-offs

• Multi-cloud: Resilience & choice but complex ops & egress fees.
• Hybrid: Compliance & control but slower agility & higher overhead.

Pitfalls

• Thinking multi-cloud gives “free portability.”
• Ignoring cross-cloud latency/egress fees.
• Inconsistent IAM or policy drift.
• Underestimating networking and observability challenges.