Bulkhead

Reliability

Bulkhead

Bounded, separate resource pools per dependency so one slow dependency cannot starve the others.

Why interviewers ask about it

A shared thread pool means one dependency slowing to 5 s parks every thread and takes down unrelated endpoints.

Circuit Breaker

After N consecutive failures, stop calling a dependency for a cooldown, then probe with a half-open state.

Blast Radius

How much of the system a single failure affects.

This term is part of the free System Design interview preparation module - browse the full glossary for every definition.