Glossary term
What is Load shedding? Meaning for developers
In System Design
Rejecting excess requests to protect the system. Example: Returning 503 to low-priority traffic during overload.
Learn it properly · System DesignLesson 44: Graceful Degradation & Load SheddingAt 5× your planned peak, trying to serve everyone means serving no one. How to fail partially and on purpose: rank features and switch off the optional ones, reject excess work early and cheaply, shed by priority, and use waiting rooms for spikes you can see coming.In Observability & SRE
Refusing some work on purpose and quickly when overloaded, so the work you accept still finishes fast.
Learn it properly · Observability & SRELesson 7: Reliability Patterns: Timeouts, Retries, Circuit Breakers and Graceful DegradationFailure modes, timeouts and retries with backoff, circuit breakers, bulkheads, load shedding, tested with fault injection.