.NET Architecture & System Design Interview Question #133

How should Retry and Circuit Breaker be combined?

Resilience, Rate Limiting, Health Checks & Observability Senior Advanced

Quick Interview Answer

Retry handles short transient failures by making a small number of additional attempts. Circuit Breaker handles sustained failures by stopping calls for a period.

Detailed Explanation

Retry handles short transient failures by making a small number of additional attempts. Circuit Breaker handles sustained failures by stopping calls for a period.

The policies should be coordinated so retries do not overwhelm a failing service. Timeouts, retry counts, circuit thresholds, and the overall request budget must be considered together.

Code Example

Call
 -> Timeout
 -> bounded Retry
 -> Circuit Breaker observes failures

Persistent failure
-> circuit opens
-> fail fast