Circuit Breaker Patterns for Downstream Systems

Protect your edge pipelines from cascading failures when downstream systems fail.

The Problem

When edge pipelines depend on downstream systems, failures cascade:

• Single unresponsive endpoint backs up entire pipeline
• Pending requests consume memory until crash
• No automatic recovery from transient failures

The Solution

Learn 4 circuit breaker techniques:

1. HTTP Client Circuit Breakers - Fast timeouts and exponential backoff for external APIs
2. Database Circuit Breakers - Connection limits and query timeouts to prevent pool exhaustion
3. Multi-Level Fallback - Primary to secondary to local buffer to DLQ for high availability
4. Production Monitoring - Metrics, logging, and alerting for circuit state visibility

Get Started

Choose your path:

Interactive Explorer

See each circuit breaker technique with live examples

Step-by-Step Tutorial

Build the pipeline incrementally:

1. HTTP Client Circuit Breakers
2. Database Circuit Breakers
3. Multi-Level Fallback
4. Production Monitoring

Complete Pipeline

Download the production-ready implementation