Application Resilience Engineering & Operations at Netflix

Presented at Velocity 2013 Santa Clara http://velocityconf.com/velocity2013/public/schedule/detail/28267

Distributed applications are complex systems full of latent failures (bugs), latency and ever changing behavior in the relationships between components. Systems easily “drift” from a state of resilience and failure can emerge from component relationships. Thus, applications (as components of a complex system) must be resilient to latency and failure on all of its system relationships and not rely upon infrastructure alone to implement this resilience.

Common resilience patterns used by Netflix in production will be shared including:

- Bulkhead isolation using threads and semaphores
- Circuit breaker
- Fail Fast
- Fail Silent
- Static Fallback
- Stubbed Fallback
- Fallback via Network Cache

With these common patterns we can achieve resilience to system relationships failing, but systems are complex and always changing so operating and maintaining a resilient system includes finding weaknesses and managing drift. Operating such systems at Netflix with resilience patterns over the past 18 months has shown that implementing them in code is only half the battle – knowing how to deploy, configure, operate and maintain resilience is a different set of knowledge.

Transcript

1. Application Resilience Engineering and Operations at Netflix Ben Christensen – @benjchristensen – Software Engineer on API Platform at Netflix
2. Global deployment spread across data centers in multiple AWS regions. Geographic isolation, active/active with regional failover coming (http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/05/denominating-multi-region-sites.html)
3. AWS Availability Zone AWS Availability Zone AWS Availability Zone 3 data centers (AWS Availability Zones) operate in each region with deployments split across them for redundancy in event of losing an entire zone.
4. Each zone is populated with application clusters (‘auto-scaling groups’ or ASGs) that make up the service oriented distributed system. Application clusters operate independently of each other with software and hardware load balancing routing traffic between them.
5. Application clusters are made up of 1 to 100s of machine instances per zone. Service registry and discovery work with software load balancing to allow machines to launch and disappear (for planned or unplanned reasons) at any time and become part of the distributed system and serve requests. Auto-scaling enables system-wide adaptation to demand as it launches instances to meet increasing traffic and load or handle instance failure.
6. Failed instances are dropped from discovery so traffic stops routing to them. Software load balancers on client applications detect and skip them until discovery removes them.
7. Auto-scale policies brings on new instances to replace failed ones or to adapt to increasing demand.
8. User Request Dependency A Dependency D Dependency G Dependency J Dependency M Dependency P Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency Q Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O Dependency R Applications communicate with dozens of other applications in the service-oriented architecture. Each of these client/server dependencies represents a relationship within the complex distributed system.
9. User Request Dependency A Dependency D Dependency G Dependency J Dependency M Dependency P Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency Q Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O Dependency R User request blocked by latency in single network call Any one of these relationships can fail at any time. They can be intermittent or cluster-wide, immediate with thrown exceptions or returned error codes or latency from various causes. Latency is particularly challenging for applications to deal with as it causes resource utilization in queues and pools and blocks user requests (even with async IO).
10. At high volume all request threads can block in seconds User Request Dependency A Dependency D Dependency G Dependency J Dependency M Dependency P Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency Q Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O Dependency R User Request User Request User Request User Request User Request User Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Latency at high volume can quickly saturate all application resources (queues, pools, sockets, etc) causing total application failure and the inability to serve user requests even if all other dependencies are healthy.
11. Dozens of dependencies. One going bad takes everything down. 99.99%30 = 99.7% uptime 0.3% of 1 billion = 3,000,000 failures 2+ hours downtime/month Reality is generally worse. Large distributed systems are complex and failure will occur. If failure from every component is allowed to cascade across the system they will all affect the user.
12. CONSTRAINTS Speed of Iteration Client Libraries Mixed Environment Solution design was done with constraints, context and priorities of the Netflix environment.
13. CONSTRAINTS Speed of Iteration Client Libraries Mixed Environment Speed of iteration is optimized for and this leads to client/server relationships where client libraries are provided rather than each team writing their own client code against a server protocol. This means “3rd party” code from many developers and teams is constantly being deployed into applications across the system. Large applications such as the Netflix API have dozens of client libraries.
14. CONSTRAINTS Speed of Iteration Client Libraries Mixed Environment Speed of iteration is optimized for and this leads to client/server relationships where client libraries are provided rather than each team writing their own client code against a server protocol. This means “3rd party” code from many developers and teams is constantly being deployed into applications across the system. Large applications such as the Netflix API have dozens of client libraries.
15. CONSTRAINTS Speed of Iteration Client Libraries Mixed Environment The environment is also diverse with different types of client/server communications and protocols. This heterogenous and always changing environment affects the approach for resilience engineering and is potentially very different than approaches taken for a tightly controlled codebase or homogenous architecture.
16. User Request Dependency A Dependency D Dependency G Dependency J Dependency M Dependency P Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency Q Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O Dependency R User Request User Request User Request User Request User Request User Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Each dependency - or distributed system relationship - must be isolated so its failure does not cascade or saturate all resources.
17. cy D dency G ependency J Dependency M Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O User Request User Request User Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Network Request - TCP/HTTP, latency, 4xx, 5xx, etc Deserialization - JSON/XML/Thrift/Protobuf/etc Logic - argument validation, caches, metrics, logging, multivariate testing, routing, etc Serialization - URL and/or body generation Logic - validation, decoration, object model, caching, metrics, logging, etc It is not just the network that can fail and needs isolation but the full request/response loop including business logic and serialization/deserialization. Protecting against a network failure only to return a response that causes application logic to fail elsewhere in the application only moves the problem.
18. User Request Dependency A Dependency D Dependency G Dependency J Dependency M Dependency P Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency Q Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O Dependency R Bulkheading is an approach to isolating failure and latency. It can be used to compartmentalize each system relationship so their failure impact is limited and controllable.
19. User Request Dependency A Dependency D Dependency G Dependency J Dependency M Dependency P Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency Q Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O Dependency R Bulkheading is an approach to isolating failure and latency. It can be used to compartmentalize each system relationship so their failure impact is limited and controllable.
20. User Request Dependency A Dependency D Dependency G Dependency J Dependency M Dependency P Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency Q Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O Dependency R Responses can be intercepted and replaced with fallbacks.
21. User Request Dependency A Dependency D Dependency G Dependency J Dependency M Dependency P Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency Q Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O Dependency R A user request can continue in a degraded state with a fallback response from the failing dependency.
22. Logic - validation, decoration, object model, caching, metrics, logging, etc Deserialization - JSON/XML/Thrift/Protobuf/etc Network Request - TCP/HTTP, latency, 4xx, 5xx, etc Serialization - URL and/or body generation Logic - argument validation, caches, metrics, logging, multivariate testing, routing, etc A bulkhead wraps around the entire client behavior not just the network portion.
23. Tryable Semaphore Rejected Permitted Logic - validation, decoration, object model, caching, metrics, logging, etc Deserialization - JSON/XML/Thrift/Protobuf/etc Network Request - TCP/HTTP, latency, 4xx, 5xx, etc Serialization - URL and/or body generation Logic - argument validation, caches, metrics, logging, multivariate testing, routing, etc An effective form of bulkheading is a tryable semaphore that restricts concurrent execution. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-it-Works#semaphores
24. Thread-pool Rejected Permitted Logic - validation, decoration, object model, caching, metrics, logging, etc Deserialization - JSON/XML/Thrift/Protobuf/etc Network Request - TCP/HTTP, latency, 4xx, 5xx, etc Serialization - URL and/or body generation Logic - argument validation, caches, metrics, logging, multivariate testing, routing, etc Timeout A thread-pool also limits concurrent execution while also offering the ability to timeout and walk away from a latent thread. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-it-Works#threads--thread- pools
25. Construct Hystrix Command Object .observe() .execute() Asynchronous Synchronous run() Circuit Open? getFallback() Success? Exception Thrown Successful Response Return Successful Response Calculate Circuit Health Feedback Loop Not Implemented Successful Fallback Failed Fallback Exception Thrown Exception Thrown Return Fallback Response Rate Limit? Timeout Short-circuit Reject Yes return immediately .queue() Asynchronous Hystrix execution flow chart. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-it-Works#flow-chart
26. Construct Hystrix Command Object .observe() .execute() Asynchronous Synchronous run Circuit Open? getFallback() Return Successful Response Calculate Cir Health Not Implemented Successful Fallback Failed Fallback Exception Thrown Exception Thrown Return Fallback Response Rate Limit? Time Short-circuit Reject Yes return immediately .queue() Asynchronous Execution can be synchronous or asynchronous (via a Future or Observable).
27. Construct Hystrix Command Object .observe() .execute() Asynchronous Synchronous run Circuit Open? getFallback() Return Successful Response Calculate Cir Health Not Implemented Successful Fallback Failed Fallback Exception Thrown Exception Thrown Return Fallback Response Rate Limit? Time Short-circuit Reject Yes return immediately .queue() Asynchronous Current state is queried before allowing execution to determine if it is short-circuited or throttled and should reject.
28. .observe() .execute() run() Circuit Open? getFallback() Success? Exception Thrown Successful Response Return Successful Response Calculate Circuit Health Feedback Loop Not Implemented Successful Fallback Failed Fallback Rate Limit? Timeout Short-circuit Reject Yes return immediately .queue() If not rejected execution proceeds to the run() method which performs underlying work.
29. .observe() .execute() run() Circuit Open? getFallback() Success? Exception Thrown Successful Response Return Successful Response Calculate Circuit Health Feedback Loop Not Implemented Successful Fallback Failed Fallback Rate Limit? Timeout Short-circuit Reject Yes return immediately .queue() Successful responses return.
30. .observe() .execute() run() Circuit Open? getFallback() Success? Exception Thrown Successful Response Return Successful Response Calculate Circuit Health Feedback Loop Not Implemented Successful Fallback Failed Fallback Rate Limit? Timeout Short-circuit Reject Yes return immediately .queue() All requests, successful and failed, contribute to a feedback loop used to make decisions and publish metrics.
31. .observe() .execute() run() Circuit Open? getFallback() Success? Exception Thrown Successful Response Return Successful Response Calculate Circuit Health Feedback Loop Not Implemented Successful Fallback Failed Fallback Rate Limit? Timeout Short-circuit Reject Yes return immediately .queue() All failure states are routed through the same path.
32. Construct Hystrix Command Object .observe() .execute() Asynchronous Synchronous run() Circuit Open? getFallback() Return Successful Response Calculate Circu Health Not Implemented Successful Fallback Failed Fallback Exception Thrown Exception Thrown Return Fallback Response Rate Limit? Timeo Short-circuit Reject Yes return immediately .queue() Asynchronous Every failure is given the opportunity to retrieve a fallback which can result in one of three results.
33. Construct Hystrix Command Object .observe() .execute() Asynchronous Synchronous run() Circuit Open? getFallback() Success? Exception Thrown Successful Response Return Successful Response Calculate Circuit Health Feedback Loop Not Implemented Successful Fallback Failed Fallback Exception Thrown Exception Thrown Return Fallback Response Rate Limit? Timeout Short-circuit Reject Yes return immediately .queue() Asynchronous Hystrix execution flow chart. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-it-Works#flow-chart
34. HystrixCommand run() public  class  CommandHelloWorld  extends  HystrixCommand<String>  {        ...        protected  String  run()  {                return  "Hello  "  +  name  +  "!";        } } Basic successful execution pattern and sample code. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-To-Use#wiki-Hello-World
35. public  class  CommandHelloWorld  extends  HystrixCommand<String>  {        ...        protected  String  run()  {                return  "Hello  "  +  name  +  "!";        } } run() invokes “client” Logic HystrixCommand run() The run() method is where the wrapped logic goes.
36. HystrixCommand run() throw Exception Fail Fast Failing fast is the default behavior if no fallback is implemented. Even without a fallback this is useful as it prevents resource saturation beyond the bulkhead so the rest of the application can continue functioning and enables rapid recovery once the underlying problem is resolved. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-To-Use#fail-fast
37. HystrixCommand run() getFallback() return  null; return  new  Option<T>(); return  Collections.emptyList(); return  Collections.emptyMap(); Fail Silent Silent failure is an approach for removing non-essential functionality from the user experience by returning a value that equates to “no data”, “not available” or “don’t display”. Read more at https://github.com/ Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-To-Use#fail-silent
38. HystrixCommand run() getFallback() return  true; return  DEFAULT_OBJECT; Static Fallback Static fallbacks can be used when default data or behavior can be returned to the user. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-To-Use#fallback-static
39. HystrixCommand run() getFallback() return  new  UserAccount(customerId,  "Unknown  Name",                                countryCodeFromGeoLookup,  true,  true,  false); return  new  VideoBookmark(movieId,  0); Stubbed Fallback Stubbed fallbacks are an extension of static fallbacks when some data is available (such as from request arguments, authentication tokens or other functioning system calls) and combined with default values for data that can not be retrieved. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-To-Use#fallback-stubbed
40. HystrixCommand run() getFallback() Stubbed Fallback public  class  CommandHelloWorld  extends  HystrixCommand<String>  {        ...        protected  String  run()  {                return  "Hello  "  +  name  +  "!";        }        protected  String  getFallback()  {                return  "Hello  Failure  "  +  name  +  "!";        } }
41. HystrixCommand run() getFallback() Stubbed Fallback public  class  CommandHelloWorld  extends  HystrixCommand<String>  {        ...        protected  String  run()  {                return  "Hello  "  +  name  +  "!";        }        protected  String  getFallback()  {                return  "Hello  Failure  "  +  name  +  "!";        } } The getFallback() method is executed whenever failure occurs (after run() invocation or on rejection without run() ever being invoked) to provide opportunity to do fallback.
42. HystrixCommand run() getFallback() HystrixCommand run() Fallback via network Fallback via network is a common approach for falling back to a stale cache (such as a memcache server) or less personalized value when not able to fetch from the primary source. Read more at https://github.com/ Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/How-To-Use#fallback-cache-via-network
43. HystrixCommand run() getFallback() HystrixCommand run() getFallback() Fallback via network then Local When the fallback performs a network call it’s preferable for it to also have a fallback that does not go over the network otherwise if both primary and secondary systems fail it will fail by throwing an exception (similar to fail fast except after two fallback attempts).
44. So now what? Code is only part of the solution. Operations is the other critical half.
45. Historical metrics representing all possible states of success, failure, decision making and performance related to each bulk head.
46. >40,000 success 1 timeout 4 rejected Looking closely at high volume systems it is common to find constant failure.
47. The rejection spikes on the left correlate with and do in fact represent the cause of the fallback spikes on the right.
48. Latency percentiles are captured at every 5th percentile and a few extra such as 99.5th (though this graph is only showing 50th/99th/99.5th).
50. >40,000 success 0.10 exceptions Exceptions Thrown helps to identify if a failure state is being handled by a fallback successfully or not. In this case we are seeing < 0.1 exceptions per second being thrown but on the previous set of metrics saw 5-40 fallbacks occurring each second, thus we can see that the fallbacks are doing their job but we may want to look for very small number of edge cases where fallbacks fail resulting in an exception.
51. We found that historical metrics with 1 datapoint per minute and 1-2 minutes latency were not sufficient during operational events such as deployments, rollbacks, production alerts and configuration changes so we built near realtime monitoring and data visualizations to help us consume large amounts of data easily. This dashboard is the aggregate view of a production cluster with ~1-2 second latency from the time an event occurs to being rendered in the browser. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/Dashboard
52. Each bulkhead is represented with a visualization like this.
53. circle color and size represent health and traffic volume
54. 2 minutes of request rate to show relative changes in traffic circle color and size represent health and traffic volume
55. 2 minutes of request rate to show relative changes in traffic circle color and size represent health and traffic volume hosts reporting from cluster
56. last minute latency percentiles 2 minutes of request rate to show relative changes in traffic circle color and size represent health and traffic volume hosts reporting from cluster
57. last minute latency percentiles 2 minutes of request rate to show relative changes in traffic circle color and size represent health and traffic volume hosts reporting from cluster Circuit-breaker status
58. last minute latency percentiles Request rate 2 minutes of request rate to show relative changes in traffic circle color and size represent health and traffic volume hosts reporting from cluster Circuit-breaker status
59. Error percentage of last 10 seconds last minute latency percentiles Request rate 2 minutes of request rate to show relative changes in traffic circle color and size represent health and traffic volume hosts reporting from cluster Error percentage of last 10 seconds Circuit-breaker status
60. last minute latency percentiles Request rate 2 minutes of request rate to show relative changes in traffic circle color and size represent health and traffic volume hosts reporting from cluster Error percentage of last 10 seconds Circuit-breaker status Rolling 10 second counters with 1 second granularity Failures/Exceptions Thread-pool Rejections Thread timeouts Successes Short-circuited (rejected)
61. 23 5 2 0 47 8 1 0 26 4 0 0 48 9 4 0 38 4 2 0 42 6 7 0 59 11 5 1 46 5 2 0 39 3 5 0 12 1 0 0 Success Timeout Failure Rejection 10 1-second "buckets" 23 5 2 0 47 8 1 0 26 4 0 0 48 9 4 0 38 4 2 0 42 6 7 0 59 11 5 1 46 5 2 0 39 3 5 0 45 6 2 0 1 0 0 0 On "getLatestBucket" if the 1-second window is passed a new bucket is created, the rest slid over and the oldest one dropped. Low Latency Granular Metrics Rolling 10 second window 1 second resolution All metrics are captured in both absolute cumulative counters and rolling windows with 1 second granularity. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/wiki/Metrics-and-Monitoring
62. 23 5 2 0 47 8 1 0 26 4 0 0 48 9 4 0 38 4 2 0 42 6 7 0 59 11 5 1 46 5 2 0 39 3 5 0 12 1 0 0 Success Timeout Failure Rejection 10 1-second "buckets" 23 5 2 0 47 8 1 0 26 4 0 0 48 9 4 0 38 4 2 0 42 6 7 0 59 11 5 1 46 5 2 0 39 3 5 0 45 6 2 0 1 0 0 0 On "getLatestBucket" if the 1-second window is passed a new bucket is created, the rest slid over and the oldest one dropped. Low Latency Granular Metrics Rolling 10 second window 1 second resolution The rolling counters default to 10 second windows with 1 second buckets.
63. 23 5 2 0 47 8 1 0 26 4 0 0 48 9 4 0 38 4 2 0 42 6 7 0 59 11 5 1 46 5 2 0 39 3 5 0 12 1 0 0 Success Timeout Failure Rejection 10 1-second "buckets" 23 5 2 0 47 8 1 0 26 4 0 0 48 9 4 0 38 4 2 0 42 6 7 0 59 11 5 1 46 5 2 0 39 3 5 0 45 6 2 0 1 0 0 0 On "getLatestBucket" if the 1-second window is passed a new bucket is created, the rest slid over and the oldest one dropped. Low Latency Granular Metrics Rolling 10 second window 1 second resolution As each second passes the oldest bucket is dropped (to soon be overwritten since it is a ring buffer)...
64. 23 5 2 0 47 8 1 0 26 4 0 0 48 9 4 0 38 4 2 0 42 6 7 0 59 11 5 1 46 5 2 0 39 3 5 0 12 1 0 0 Success Timeout Failure Rejection 10 1-second "buckets" 23 5 2 0 47 8 1 0 26 4 0 0 48 9 4 0 38 4 2 0 42 6 7 0 59 11 5 1 46 5 2 0 39 3 5 0 45 6 2 0 1 0 0 0 On "getLatestBucket" if the 1-second window is passed a new bucket is created, the rest slid over and the oldest one dropped. Low Latency Granular Metrics Rolling 10 second window 1 second resolution ... and a new bucket is created.
65. ~1 second latency aggregated stream Turbine stream aggregator Low Latency Granular Metrics Metrics are subscribed to from all servers in a cluster and aggregated with ~1 second latency from event to aggregation. This stream can then be consumed by the dashboard, an alerting system or anything else wanting low latency metrics.
66. propagate across cluster in seconds Low Latency Configuration Changes The low latency loop is completed with the ability to propagate configuration changes across a cluster in seconds. This enables rapid iterations of seeing behavior in production, pushing config changes and then watching them take effect immediately as the changes roll across a cluster of servers. Low latency operations requires both the visibility into metrics and ability to affect change operating with similar latency windows.
67. Auditing via Simulation Simulating failure states in production has proven an effective approach for auditing our applications to either prove resilience or find weakness.
68. Auditing via Simulation In this example failure was injected into a single dependency which caused the bulkhead to return fallbacks and trip all circuits since the failure rate was almost 100%, well above the threshold for circuits to trip.
69. Auditing via Simulation When the ‘TitleStatesGetAllRentStates` bulkhead began returning fallbacks the ‘atv_mdp’ endpoint shot to the top of the dashboard with 99% error rate. There was a bug in how the fallback was handled so we immediately stopped the simulation, fixed the bug over the coming days and repeated the simulation to prove it was fixed and the rest of the system remained resilient. This was caught in a controlled simulation where we could catch and act in less than a minute rather than a true production incident where we likely wouldn’t have been able to do anything.
70. This shows another simulation where latency was injected. Read more at http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/07/netflix-simian-army.html
71. 125 -> 1500+ 1000+ ms of latency was injected into a dependency that normally completes with a median latency of ~15-20ms and 99.5th of 120-130ms.
72. ~5000 The latency spike caused timeouts, short-circuiting and rejecting and up to ~5000 fallbacks per second as a result of these various failure states.
73. ~1 While delivering the ~5000 fallbacks per second the exceptions thrown didn’t go beyond ~1 per second demonstrating that user impact was negligible (as perceived from the server, the client behavior must also be validated during a simulation but is not part of this dataset).
74. Zuul Routing Layer Canary vs Baseline Squeeze Production "Coalmine" Other approaches to auditing take advantage of our routing layer to route traffic to different clusters. Read more at http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/06/announcing-zuul-edge-service-in-cloud.html
75. Zuul Routing Layer Canary vs Baseline Squeeze Production "Coalmine" Every code deployment is preceded by a canary test where a small number of instances are launched to take production traffic, half with new code (canary), half with existing production code (baseline) and compared for differences. Thousands of system, application and bulkhead metrics are compared to make a decision on whether the new code should continue to full deployment. Many issues are found via production canaries that are not found in dev and test environments.
76. Zuul Routing Layer Canary vs Baseline Squeeze Production "Coalmine" New instances are also put through a squeeze test before full rollout to find the point at which the performance degrades. This is used to identify performance and throughput changes of each deployment.
77. Zuul Routing Layer Canary vs Baseline Squeeze Production "Coalmine" Long-term canaries are kept in a cluster we call “coalmine” with agents intercepting all network traffic. These run the same code as the production cluster and are used to identify network traffic without a bulkhead that starts happening due to unknown code paths being enabled via configuration, AB test and other changes. Read more at https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/tree/master/hystrix-contrib/hystrix-network- auditor-agent
78. User Request Dependency A Dependency D Dependency G Dependency J Dependency M Dependency P Dependency B Dependency E Dependency H Dependency K Dependency N Dependency Q Dependency C Dependency F Dependency I Dependency L Dependency O Dependency R System Relationship Over Network without Bulkhead For example, a network relationship could exist in production code but not be triggered in dev, test or production canaries but then be enabled via a condition that changes days after deployment to production. This can be a vulnerability and we use the “coalmine” to identity these situations and inform decisions.
79. Zuul Routing Layer Canary vs Baseline Squeeze Production "Coalmine"
80. Failure inevitably happens ...
81. Cluster adapts Failure Isolated When the backing system for the ‘SocialGetTitleContext’ bulkhead became latent the impact was contained and fallbacks returned.
82. Cluster adapts Failure Isolated When the backing system for the ‘SocialGetTitleContext’ bulkhead became latent the impact was contained and fallbacks returned.
83. Cluster adapts Failure Isolated Since the failure rate was above the threshold circuit breakers began tripping. As a portion of the cluster tripped circuits it released pressure on the underlying system so it could successfully perform some work.
84. Cluster adapts Failure Isolated The cluster naturally adapts as bulkheads constrain throughput and circuits open and close in a rolling manner across the instances in the cluster.
85. In this example the ‘CinematchGetPredictions’ functionality began failing.
86. The red metric shows it was exceptions thrown by the client, not latency or concurrency constraints.
87. The 20% error rate from the realtime visualization is also seen in the historical metrics with accompanying drop in successes.
88. Matching the increase in failures is the increase of fallbacks being delivered for every failure.
89. Distributed Systems are Complex Distributed applications need to be treated as complex systems and we must recognize that no machine or human can comprehend all of the state or interactions.
90. Isolate Relationships One way to dealing with the complex system is to isolate the relationships so they can each fail independently of each other. Bulkheads have proven an effective approach for isolating and managing failure.
91. Auditing & Operations are Essential Resilient code is only part of the solution. Systems drift and have latent bugs and failure states emerge from the complex interactions of the many relationships. Constant auditing can be part of the solution. Human operations must handle everything the system can’t which by definition means it is unknown so the system must strive to expose clear insights and effective tooling so humans can make informed decisions.
92. Hystrix https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix Application Resilience in a Service-oriented Architecture http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/06/application-resilience-in-a-service-oriented-architecture.html Fault Tolerance in a High Volume, Distributed System http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/02/fault-tolerance-in-high-volume.html Making the Netflix API More Resilient http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/12/making-netflix-api-more-resilient.html Ben Christensen @benjchristensen http://www.linkedin.com/in/benjchristensen jobs.netflix.com