Netflix has created a library called Hystrix that implements the circuit breaker pattern. In a microservice architecture, it is common to have multiple layers of service calls, as shown in the following example:

A service failure in the lower level of services can cause cascading failure all the way up to the user. When calls to a particular service exceed circuitBreaker.requestVolumeThreshold (default: 20 requests) and the failure percentage is greater than circuitBreaker.errorThresholdPercentage (default: >50%) in a rolling window defined by metrics.rollingStats.timeInMilliseconds (default: 10 seconds), the circuit opens and the call is not made. In cases of error and an open circuit, a fallback can be provided by the developer.

Having an open circuit stops cascading failures and allows overwhelmed or failing services time to recover. The fallback can be another Hystrix protected call, static data, or a sensible empty value. Fallbacks may be chained so that the first fallback makes some other business call, which in turn falls back to static data.