Bulkhead.
also: bulkheads · bulkhead patternIsolating resources per dependency (separate thread pools or semaphores) so one slow dependency can't consume everything.
the two-minute refresher
- Named after a ship's watertight compartments: one floods, the ship stays afloat.
- Give each downstream its own thread pool or concurrency limit.
- If the bank API hangs, it exhausts only the bank pool, and fraud checks keep working.
- Combine it with timeouts and circuit breakers; it limits damage, not failure.