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PASSEDinfrastructure / circuit_breaker_cascading_failure
Microservice Circuit Breaker Open — Cascading Failures
The payment service circuit breaker has tripped open after the payment gateway became unresponsive. This causes the order service to fail, which causes the cart service to fail, creating a cascade of open circuit breakers across 5 microservices. The entire checkout flow is non-functional.
Pattern
CONNECTION_REFUSED
Severity
CRITICAL
Confidence
85%
Remediation
Remote Hands
Test Results
| Metric | Expected | Actual | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pattern Recognition | CONNECTION_REFUSED | CONNECTION_REFUSED | |
| Severity Assessment | CRITICAL | CRITICAL | |
| Incident Correlation | Yes | 30 linked | |
| Cascade Escalation | Yes | Yes | |
| Remediation | — | Remote Hands — Corax contacts on-site support via call, email, or API |
Scenario Conditions
12-service microservice architecture. Payment gateway unresponsive. Payment service circuit breaker opens. Order service depends on payment service — its circuit breaker opens. Cascade propagates through 5 services. Entire checkout flow down.
Injected Error Messages (3)
payment service circuit breaker OPEN — upstream payment gateway at payments.provider.com unresponsive for 5 minutes, circuit breaker tripped after 20 consecutive failures (threshold: 15), all payment requests returning fallback error 'payment processing unavailable', circuit breaker half-open test scheduled in 60 seconds, 340 payment requests rejected per minute, econnrefused from payment gateway endpoint
order service circuit breaker OPEN — dependency on payment service failing, order submission returning 'dependent service unavailable', circuit breaker tripped after payment service returned errors for 3 minutes, order queue depth: 1,247 unprocessed orders, order service econnrefused on all calls to payment service, cascading circuit breaker activation detected across service mesh
cart service circuit breaker OPEN — dependency chain: cart -> order -> payment all failing, add-to-cart operations succeeding but checkout flow completely broken, users unable to complete purchases, cascading circuit breaker pattern: 5 of 12 microservices now in OPEN state (payment, order, cart, inventory-reserve, notification), entire purchase flow non-functional, econnrefused propagating through service dependency chain
Neural Engine Root Cause Analysis
The payment service circuit breaker has opened due to the upstream payment gateway at payments.provider.com being completely unresponsive, returning ECONNREFUSED errors. This indicates the payment gateway service is either down, unreachable due to network issues, or rejecting connections. The high confidence CONNECTION_REFUSED pattern and 12 correlated incidents suggest a widespread outage affecting the external payment provider rather than an internal application issue.
Remediation Plan
1. Verify external payment gateway status by checking payments.provider.com directly and their status page. 2. Test network connectivity from payment service to the gateway endpoint. 3. Contact payment provider support if confirmed down on their end. 4. Consider activating backup payment provider if available. 5. Monitor circuit breaker for automatic recovery once gateway is restored. 6. Communicate payment processing unavailability to users until resolution.
Tested: 2026-03-30Monitors: 3 | Incidents: 3Test ID: cmnckh4lh09hjobqevag8c4fg