.NET, Polly and 5 other microservices have liked this post

I remember the first time I deployed a suite of microservices into production (for a cashback company). Everything seemed to run smoothly until services started talking to each other in ways I never fully anticipated. One microservice would fail, causing a ripple effect of timeouts and errors across the entire system. The lesson? In a distributed world, every service is only as strong as its resilience strategy. Enter Polly. Polly is the go-to .NET library for dealing with transient faults and unpredictable network issues challenges that are magnified in microservice architectures. Whether you’re calling a payment microservice, retrieving weather data for shipping cost estimates, or connecting to any external API, Polly ensures your calls can handle real-world chaos. Visual Overview Below is a simple conceptual diagram of how multiple microservices might interact with each other or external APIs, all protected by Polly’s resilience policies. ┌────────────────────┐ ┌───────────────────────┐ │ .NET Microservice │ │ External REST Service │ │ (e.g., Service A) │ ---> │ (e.g., Weather API) │ │ │ │ │ │ Polly Policies │ │ Potential Failures │ └────────────────────┘ └───────────────────────┘ │ │ ┌────────────────────┐ │ │ .NET Microservice │ └──────> │ (e.g., Service B) │ │ │ │ Polly Policies │ └────────────────────┘ Each microservice can independently configure Polly to handle retries, timeouts, circuit breakers, and more. That way, a failure in one service or an external API doesn’t bring down your entire ecosystem. 1. Start with the Right Building Blocks Polly has evolved significantly and now comes in a modular v8+ form that integrates seamlessly with .NET 9 and beyond perfect for microservices, where you often need flexibility in how you plug into different services.

Apr 7, 2025 - 17:00

.NET, Polly and 5 other microservices have liked this post

I remember the first time I deployed a suite of microservices into production (for a cashback company). Everything seemed to run smoothly until services started talking to each other in ways I never fully anticipated. One microservice would fail, causing a ripple effect of timeouts and errors across the entire system. The lesson? In a distributed world, every service is only as strong as its resilience strategy.

Enter Polly. Polly is the go-to .NET library for dealing with transient faults and unpredictable network issues challenges that are magnified in microservice architectures. Whether you’re calling a payment microservice, retrieving weather data for shipping cost estimates, or connecting to any external API, Polly ensures your calls can handle real-world chaos.

Visual Overview

Below is a simple conceptual diagram of how multiple microservices might interact with each other or external APIs, all protected by Polly’s resilience policies.

 ┌────────────────────┐       ┌───────────────────────┐
 │  .NET Microservice │       │ External REST Service │
 │ (e.g., Service A)  │  ---> │  (e.g., Weather API)  │
 │                    │       │                       │
 │     Polly Policies │       │  Potential Failures   │
 └────────────────────┘       └───────────────────────┘
         │
         │        ┌────────────────────┐
         │        │  .NET Microservice │
         └──────> │ (e.g., Service B)  │
                  │                    │
                  │     Polly Policies │
                  └────────────────────┘

Each microservice can independently configure Polly to handle retries, timeouts, circuit breakers, and more. That way, a failure in one service or an external API doesn’t bring down your entire ecosystem.

1. Start with the Right Building Blocks

Polly has evolved significantly and now comes in a modular v8+ form that integrates seamlessly with .NET 9 and beyond perfect for microservices, where you often need flexibility in how you plug into different services.