Building Resilient Microservices

Microservices architecture provides scalability and flexibility but introduces complexity, particularly regarding fault tolerance. In this post, we'll explore some patterns to ensure your services remain resilient.

Circuit Breaker

The Circuit Breaker pattern prevents an application from repeatedly trying to execute an operation that's likely to fail. allowing it to continue without waiting for the fault to be fixed or wasting CPU cycles while it determines that the fault is long-lasting.

// Example pseudo-code in Go
func CallService() error {
    if breaker.IsOpen() {
        return errors.New("circuit is open")
    }
    // ... make call
}

Retry with Exponential Backoff

When a service call fails, retrying immediately can overload the struggling service. Exponential backoff increases the wait time between retries, giving the system time to recover.

Key Takeaways

1. Design for failure: Assume things will break.
2. Observability is key: You can't fix what you can't measure.
3. Keep it simple: Don't add complexity unless necessary.

Stay tuned for more deep dives into backend engineering.