Circuit Breakers

Bastion implements per-target circuit breakers that prevent cascading failures by short-circuiting requests to unhealthy upstreams. When an upstream target accumulates too many failures, the circuit opens and subsequent requests fail fast with 503 instead of waiting for the upstream to time out.

Three-State Model01

Circuit breakers follow the standard three-state pattern:

         failures >= threshold
  CLOSED ─────────────────────► OPEN
    ▲                              │
    │                              │ reset timeout expires
    │  success threshold met       │
    │                              ▼
    └──────────────────────── HALF-OPEN
                               (limited probes)

Closed (Normal)

All requests pass through to the upstream. Failures are counted within a sliding time window. When the failure count reaches the threshold, the circuit transitions to Open.

Open (Fail-Fast)

All requests are immediately rejected with HTTP 503. No traffic reaches the upstream. After the reset timeout expires, the circuit transitions to Half-Open.

Half-Open (Probing)

A limited number of probe requests are allowed through. If the probes succeed, the circuit transitions back to Closed. If any probe fails, the circuit returns to Open and the reset timer restarts.

Configuration02

bastion.WithCircuitBreaker(bastion.CircuitBreakerConfig{
    Enabled:          true,
    FailureThreshold: 5,
    FailureWindow:    60 * time.Second,
    ResetTimeout:     30 * time.Second,
    HalfOpenMax:      3,
})

Configuration Fields

Per-Target Isolation03

Each upstream target has its own independent circuit breaker. A failing target does not affect other targets in the same route. The load balancer skips targets whose circuit is in the Open state, ensuring traffic flows only to healthy targets.

// Target A's circuit is open (failing)
// Target B's circuit is closed (healthy)
// Load balancer routes all traffic to Target B

The current circuit state is stored on the Target struct:

type Target struct {
    // ...
    CircuitState CircuitState `json:"circuitState"`
    // ...
}

Per-Route Overrides04

Individual routes can override the global circuit breaker settings:

bastion.WithRoute(bastion.RouteConfig{
    Path: "/critical-api/*",
    CircuitBreaker: &bastion.CBConfig{
        FailureThreshold: 3,    // Trip faster for critical routes
        ResetTimeout:     15 * time.Second,
        HalfOpenMax:      1,    // Single probe before full recovery
    },
    Targets: []bastion.TargetConfig{
        {URL: "http://critical-backend:8080"},
    },
})

State Transitions05

Closed to Open

The circuit trips when the number of consecutive failures (5xx responses, timeouts, connection errors) within the FailureWindow reaches the FailureThreshold.

Open to Half-Open

After ResetTimeout elapses, the next request transitions the circuit to Half-Open. The timer is purely duration-based -- no traffic is needed to trigger the transition.

Half-Open to Closed

If HalfOpenMax consecutive probe requests succeed, the circuit returns to Closed and normal traffic resumes.

Half-Open to Open

If any probe request fails during the Half-Open state, the circuit immediately returns to Open and the reset timer restarts.

Monitoring Circuit Breaker State06

Metrics

When metrics are enabled, the gateway exports a gauge per target:

gateway.circuit_breaker_state.<targetID>

Values: 0 = Closed, 1 = Half-Open, 2 = Open.

Admin API

The admin API exposes circuit breaker state for all targets:

GET /gateway/api/routes

Each route's targets include the circuitState field in the JSON response.

Resetting a Circuit

The admin API allows manually resetting a circuit breaker to the Closed state:

POST /gateway/api/circuits/<targetID>/reset

This is useful for recovering from a known transient failure without waiting for the reset timeout.

Integration with Load Balancing07

The load balancer's health filter excludes targets with an Open circuit. This means:

• Targets in Closed state receive normal traffic.

• Targets in Half-Open state receive limited probe traffic.

• Targets in Open state receive no traffic at all.

If all targets in a route have open circuits, the proxy engine returns 503 Service Unavailable.