Error Handling & Failure Modes

Distributed systems fail in surprising ways. You should anticipate network timeouts, partial failures, retries, and fallbacks before you implement anything.

Starting points

• Timeouts, retries, backoff
• Circuit breaker pattern
• Designing error responses

Key Points

• The calls that are idempotent and safe to retry are clearly defined.
• Fallback behavior on failure is implemented.
• Error responses enable debugging without leaking sensitive data.

Page Info

• Version 1.1
• Last updated: 01.10.2025 18:00:00
• Updated by: GS