Improvements to the circuit breaker prediction model for increasing the fault tolerance of microservices
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17721/1812-5409.2026/1.30Keywords:
microservices architecture, distributed systems, fault tolerance, resilience patterns, high load, circuit breaker, service communication, runtime adaptationAbstract
In high-load distributed systems, it is crucial to pay strict attention to the reliability of communication between architectural components, making fault tolerance a fundamental property of microservice architecture. While various fault tolerance patterns exist to improve microservice resilience, and their implementations are widely adopted, none are universal for the range of possible failures in service communication. Therefore, there is a continuous need to search for more effective approaches to achieving fault tolerance in distributed software systems.
This research is building upon our earlier study, which introduced the Circuit Breaker Prediction Model. The main principle of the Prediction model is to calculate the rating of communication between two services, defined as a convex combination of various performance metrics, and the rating value is then used to determine whether the interaction with the target service can be safely re-established after the period of blocking outgoing requests. Compared to standard implementations of this method, it was specifically designed to reduce the latency involved in blocking request transmission between microservices, especially under uncertain load conditions.
The purpose of this paper is to enhance this model and verify its effectiveness when combined with other resilience patterns, particularly Retry and Timeout. The study enhances the flexibility of the Circuit Breaker Prediction Model by describing an adaptable sliding window mechanism that dynamically adjusts the context size based on load conditions at runtime. Also, the algorithm of rating calculation is generalized to enable the usage of any substantial number of performance metrics. Finally, this research conducts simulated experiments with multiple service communication configurations and fault tolerance pattern combinations, using the standard Circuit Breaker implementation as a baseline for comparison. The findings show improved communication performance, mainly due to reduced request transmission delays under the same load conditions. The prospects of applying this model’s principles to other fault tolerance patterns have been discussed, with particular emphasis on the potential of using machine-assisted optimization techniques in dynamic decision making.
Pages of the article in the issue: 225 - 236
Language of the article: English
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Copyright (c) 2026 Anatolii Pashko, Ihor Paprotskyi, Andrii Glybovets, Svitlana Terenchuk
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