The Art of CTO System Design Canvas is a drag-and-drop architecture diagramming tool with built-in cost estimation, component connections, and export to PNG/SVG for system design documentation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a system design diagram include?
A comprehensive system design diagram should show compute components (servers, containers, serverless functions), data stores (databases, caches, message queues), external integrations (third-party APIs, CDNs), network boundaries (VPCs, subnets, firewalls), data flow directions, and protocol types (HTTP, gRPC, WebSocket). Include estimated throughput at key connection points and note which components are stateful vs. stateless. The best diagrams communicate both the current architecture and the reasoning behind key design decisions.
How do you estimate infrastructure costs from a system design?
Map each component in your design to its cloud equivalent (EC2/GKE instances, RDS/Cloud SQL, S3/GCS buckets), then estimate usage based on expected traffic patterns. Calculate compute costs from instance type times hours, storage from GB times months, and network from data transfer volumes. Add a 20-30% buffer for overhead services (monitoring, logging, load balancing, DNS). For early-stage estimates, use on-demand pricing; for budgeting, model reserved instance and committed use discounts that typically save 30-60%.