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Netflix
Hystrix
Java2012–2024
Netflix / Hystrix

Hystrix

Hystrix is a latency and fault tolerance library designed to isolate points of access to remote systems, services and 3rd party libraries, stop cascading failure and enable resilience in complex distributed systems where failure is inevitable.

24Distinct people
27Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
24.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Hystrix is a latency and fault tolerance library designed to isolate points of access to remote systems, services and 3rd party libraries, stop cascading failure and enable resilience in complex distributed systems where failure is inevitable.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year27 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2012-11-27 04:35:56 UTC to 2024-02-27 19:52:44 UTC.

02462012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 2 submissions, 4 comments20122013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 4 submissions, 1 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC624
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC541
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Hystrix: Latency and Fault Tolerance for Distributed Systems Hystrix Status Hystrix is no longer in active development, and is currently in maintenance mode. Hystrix (at version 1.5.18) is stable enough to meet the needs of Netflix for our existing applications. Meanwhile, our focus has shifted towards more adaptive implementations that react to an application’s real time performance rather than pre-configured settings (for example, through adaptive concurrency limits). For the cases where something like Hystrix makes sense, we intend to continue using Hystrix for existing applications, and to leverage open and active projects like resilience4j for new internal projects. We are beginning to recommend others do the same. Netflix Hystrix is now officially in maintenance mode, with the following expectations to the greater community: Netflix will no longer actively review issues, merge pull-requests, and release new versions of Hystrix. We have made a final release of Hystrix (1.5.18) per issue 1891 so that the latest version in Maven Central is aligned with the last known stable version used internally at Netflix (1.5.11). If members of the community are interested in taking ownership of Hystrix and moving it back into active mode, please reach out to hystrixoss@googlegroups.com. Hystrix has served Netflix and the community well over the years, and the transition to maintenance mode is in no way an indication that the concepts and ideas from Hystrix are no longer valuable. On the contrary, Hystrix has inspired many great ideas and projects. We thank everyone at Netflix, and in the greater community, for all the contributions made to Hystrix over the years. Introduction Hystrix is a latency and fault tolerance library designed to isolate points of access to remote systems, services and 3rd party libraries, stop cascading failure and enable resilience in complex distributed systems where failure is inevitable. Full Documentation See the Wiki for full documentation, examples, operational details and other information. See the Javadoc for the API. Communication Google Group: HystrixOSS Twitter: @HystrixOSS GitHub Issues What does it do? 1) Latency and Fault Tolerance Stop cascading failures. Fallbacks and graceful degradation. Fail fast and rapid recovery. Thread and semaphore isolation with circuit breakers. 2) Realtime Operations Realtime monitoring and configuration changes. Watch service and property changes take effect immediately as they spread across a fleet. Be alerted, make decisions, affect change and see results in seconds. 3) Concurrency Parallel execution. Concurrency aware request caching. Automated batching through request collapsing. Hello World! Code to be isolated is wrapped inside the run() method of a HystrixCommand similar to the following: public class CommandHelloWorld extends HystrixCommand<String> { private final String name; public CommandHelloWorld(String name) { super(HystrixCommandGroupKey.Factory.asKey("ExampleGroup")); this.name = name; } @Override protected String run() { return "Hello " + name + "!"; } } This command could be used like this: String s = new CommandHelloWorld("Bob").execute(); Future<String> s = new CommandHelloWorld("Bob").queue(); Observable<String> s = new CommandHelloWorld("Bob").observe(); More examples and information can be found in the How To Use section. Example source code can be found in the hystrix-examples module. Binaries Binaries and dependency information for Maven, Ivy, Gradle and others can be found at http://search.maven.org. Change history and version numbers => CHANGELOG.md Example for Maven: <dependency> <groupId>com.netflix.hystrix</groupId> <artifactId>hystrix-core</artifactId> <version>x.y.z</version> </dependency> and for Ivy: <dependency org="com.netflix.hystrix" name="hystrix-core" rev="x.y.z" /> If you need to download the jars instead of using a build system, create a Maven pom file like this with the desired version: <?xml version="1.0"?> <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>com.netflix.hystrix.download</groupId> <artifactId>hystrix-download</artifactId> <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version> <name>Simple POM to download hystrix-core and dependencies</name> <url>http://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix</url> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>com.netflix.hystrix</groupId> <artifactId>hystrix-core</artifactId> <version>x.y.z</version> <scope/> </dependency> </dependencies> </project> Then execute: mvn -f download-hystrix-pom.xml dependency:copy-dependencies It will download hystrix-core-*.jar and its dependencies into ./target/dependency/. You need Java 6 or later. Build To build: $ git clone git@github.com:Netflix/Hystrix.git $ cd Hystrix/ $ ./gradlew build Further details on building can be found on the Getting Started page of the wiki. Run Demo To run a demo app do the following: $ git clone git@github.com:Netflix/Hystrix.git $ cd Hystrix/ ./gradlew runDemo You will see output similar to the following: Request => GetUserAccountCommand[SUCCESS][8ms], GetPaymentInformationCommand[SUCCESS][20ms], GetUserAccountCommand[SUCCESS, RESPONSE_FROM_CACHE][0ms]x2, GetOrderCommand[SUCCESS][101ms], CreditCardCommand[SUCCESS][1075ms] Request => GetUserAccountCommand[FAILURE, FALLBACK_SUCCESS][2ms], GetPaymentInformationCommand[SUCCESS][22ms], GetUserAccountCommand[FAILURE, FALLBACK_SUCCESS, RESPONSE_FROM_CACHE][0ms]x2, GetOrderCommand[SUCCESS][130ms], CreditCardCommand[SUCCESS][1050ms] Request => GetUserAccountCommand[FAILURE, FALLBACK_SUCCESS][4ms], GetPaymentInformationCommand[SUCCESS][19ms], GetUserAccountCommand[FAILURE, FALLBACK_SUCCESS, RESPONSE_FROM_CACHE][0ms]x2, GetOrderCommand[SUCCESS][145ms], CreditCardCommand[SUCCESS][1301ms]
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

27 sources
Netflix was talking alot about circuit breaks a few years ago, and had the Hystrix project. Looks like Hystrix is discontinued, so I'm not sure if there are good library solutions that are easy to adopt. Overall I don't see it getting talked about that frequently... beyond just exponential backoff inside a retry loop. - https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ3wIuvmHeM I think talks about Hystrix a bit, but I'm not sure if it's the presentation I'm thinking of from years ago or not.
In Summary of the AWS Service Event in the Northern Virginia (US-East-1) Region
This library looks very interesting. I've used a similar approach for pulling batches of items from a queue (e.g. discover the optimal batch size and inter-poll wait time). There are plenty of other places we could benefit from something like this. I can't wait to try this out. Netflix puts out some amazing Java libraries. I've had excellent results using Hystrix [0]. It has been an excellent addition to our systems. [0] https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix
In Concurrency Limits by Netflix
I find this pretty hilarious coming from the guy who wrote Hystrix of which was extremely tightly coupled to another library called Archaius of which pulls a gazillion other dependencies (that being said I still highly respect Ben). I had to spend a couple of days decoupling the mess [1]. The other annoying thing with Hystrix is that its basically Request/Reply pattern except its even worse because it uses inheritance (command pattern) and a massive singleton (HystrixPlugins). Furthermore although it uses a streaming library (rxjava) it sort of disingenuously provides very little actual support for streaming. You don't need to have separate executables to make things decoupled but rather a good build system and architecture. Some of the ways are avoiding Request/Reply, singletons, and the command pattern. We achieve fairly good decoupling
Read the rest
by using a language agnostic custom message bus (it's over RabbitMQ which is AMQP... tons of clients) but you could use an actor framework or as another poster (@platform) mentioned Storm and Erlang process if you want to stick to one language. [1]: https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/pull/1083
In Microservices Ending Up as a Distributed Monolith
That is correct that the libraries should not have DI but I should be able to wire up the library on my own and not let the library do its own static initialization. What is far worse than Class.forName and other crap is libraries self imposed singletons. Take for example Hystrix. I'm just now fixing that the thing loads up its own configuration framework (Archaius) which uses static initialization. Archaius needed like 10 other dependencies. This is all really because Hystrix uses static singleton (HystrixPlugins) and many frameworks need this or else is incredibly difficult to get an implementation up (ie using pseudo singleton to avoid excessive passing of a context). https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/pull/1083
In Kill Your Dependencies
The lighter let-it-crash is a circuit breaker. This is done quite frequently in the JVM world because .. well the JVM has a really shitty startup time.. even restarting threadpools can be expensive. I get the whole let-it-crash but I really would like more tools on feedback control and backpressure handling (ie whats the right amount threads to allocate and how many failures/timeouts should you allow etc...). Even monitoring is a pain (ie too many alarms). I don't know if erlang provides libraries for this but its a hard problem (see https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix/issues/131).
In The Zen of Erlang

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