Backpressure Isn’t a Bug: It’s a Feature for Building Resilient Systems

Backpressure isn’t a failure mode—it’s a resilience pattern. In distributed systems, it helps prevent overload by controlling how fast producers send data to consumers. This post breaks down why backpressure happens, where it shows up, and how to design systems that don’t collapse under pressure.

Backpressure is the hidden negotiation between producers and consumers. Master it, and your systems scale gracefully. Ignore it, and they crumble under peak load.

The quote above suggests that even the most robust and well-engineered dams cannot withstand the destructive forces of an unchecked and uncontrolled flood. Similarly, in the context of a distributed system, an unchecked caller can often overwhelm the entire system and cause cascading failures.

In a previous article, I wrote about how a retry storm has the potential to take down an entire service if proper guardrails are not in ...