Bulkhead pattern

What is Bulkhead pattern?

 Category
 Reliability
What is Bulkhead pattern?
 Category
 Reliability

 Elements of an application are isolated into pools, so that If one fails, the others will continue to
function.
What is Bulkhead pattern?
 Category
 Reliability

 Elements of an application are isolated into pools, so that If one fails, the others will continue to
function.

 Related Patterns
What is Bulkhead pattern?
 Category
 Reliability

 Elements of an application are isolated into pools, so that If one fails, the others will continue to
function.

 Related Patterns
 Circuit Breaker pattern
What is Bulkhead pattern?
 Category
 Reliability

 Elements of an application are isolated into pools, so that If one fails, the others will continue to
function.

 Related Patterns
 Circuit Breaker pattern
 Retry Pattern
What is Bulkhead pattern?
 Category
 Reliability

 Elements of an application are isolated into pools, so that If one fails, the others will continue to
function.

 Related Patterns
 Circuit Breaker pattern
 Retry Pattern
 Throttling Pattern
Where does Bulkhead name come from?
Where does Bulkhead name come from?
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Considerations
 Level of isolation
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Considerations
 Level of isolation

 Combine with retry, circuit breaker, and throttling patterns

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Considerations
 Level of isolation

 Combine with retry, circuit breaker, and throttling patterns

 Consider processes and thread pools.

Considerations
 Level of isolation

 Combine with retry, circuit breaker, and throttling patterns

 Consider processes and thread pools.

 Deploying into separate VMs, containers, or processes.

Considerations
 Level of isolation

 Combine with retry, circuit breaker, and throttling patterns

 Consider processes and thread pools.

 Deploying into separate VMs, containers, or processes.

 Asynchronous communication
Service C

SNAT Port Exhaustion

Service B

Service A
Considerations
 Level of isolation

 Combine with retry, circuit breaker, and throttling patterns

 Consider processes and thread pools.

 Deploying into separate VMs, containers, or processes.

 Asynchronous communication

 Level granularity
Considerations
 Level of isolation

 Combine with retry, circuit breaker, and throttling patterns

 Consider processes and thread pools.

 Deploying into separate VMs, containers, or processes.

 Asynchronous communication

 Level granularity

 Monitoring
When to use this pattern?
When to use this pattern?

 Isolate resources used to consume backend services.

When to use this pattern?

 Isolate resources used to consume backend services.

 Isolate critical consumers from standard consumers

When to use this pattern?

 Isolate resources used to consume backend services.

 Isolate critical consumers from standard consumers

 Protect the application from cascading failure.

When NOT to use this pattern?
When NOT to use this pattern?

 Less efficient use of resources

When NOT to use this pattern?

 Less efficient use of resources

 The added complexity is not necessary

Thank You!