> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.breakscale.tech/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Retry storm

> Retries making an overload worse

A short timeout with retries in front of a small database. Retries multiply the load that caused them.

## What to watch

The database handles 100 a second. Once waiting passes the 250ms timeout on the API, every request starts retrying three times, so the load triples onto a database that was already full. It is steady at 80 a second. Push to 85 and it starts losing most of its traffic; by 90 almost none gets through.

## What it is made of

| Component | Count |
| --------- | ----: |
| Client    |     1 |
| Database  |     1 |
| Service   |     1 |

## Under load

Measured by running this design through the simulator at multiples of its own offered rate of 45 requests a second. Twenty seconds of simulated time, one fixed seed, so the same numbers come out every time.

<Note>This design holds 90 requests a second with 0% errors. At 113 it is losing 100% of them.</Note>

| Offered | Goodput |            p99 | Errors |
| ------: | ------: | -------------: | -----: |
|      45 |      40 |        109.6ms |     0% |
|      68 |      77 |        140.9ms |     0% |
|      90 |      91 |        149.3ms |     0% |
|     113 |       0 | nothing served |   100% |
|     135 |       0 | nothing served |   100% |
|     180 |       0 | nothing served |   100% |
|     270 |       0 | nothing served |   100% |
|     360 |       0 | nothing served |   100% |

<Card title="Open this example" icon="play" href="https://breakscale.tech">
  Load **Retry storm** from the Examples menu and drag the traffic slider yourself.
</Card>