from Hacker News

Ask HN: How does your company set RPC timeouts for microservices?

by hq6 on 5/8/20, 5:44 AM with 3 comments

There are two sub-questions here. 1. Is the same timeout T set for every instance of service X making request A to service Z, or is a timeout chosen at runtime? 2. How is the static (or dynamic) timeout value chosen?

As a clarification, this is more of a poll to understand what people are actually doing, rather than a request for recommendation on what I should do. If you are willing to state which company you work for, I would be extra appreciative!

  • by rachelbythebay on 5/8/20, 5:50 AM

    What does the business need?

    What can the service deliver?

    If you need it faster than it can deliver... then setting your timeouts/paging/whatever to that point will just bring you pain and suffering.

    I think you'll find a lot of people just say "what's p99 right now", add a little to it so "it won't page me", and leave it there.

    Actually driving down p99... is not nearly common enough.