Cloud Computing
01 Sep 2026
3 min read
Design Circuit Breakers for Cloud Service Dependencies
When a downstream service is failing, continuing to send every request can waste threads, sockets, and latency budget while increasing load on the unhealthy dependency. A circuit breaker temporarily fails calls fast after failures cross a threshold. Understand the three states A typical breaker is closed while calls flow normally. It moves open after a configured failure policy is exceeded. After a recovery interval, it becomes half-open and allows a limited number of probes. Successful probes close the circuit; failures open it again.