Retry Backoff

A practical example

Example: an API goes down for ten minutes. With backoff, a connector retries at widening intervals and recovers on the first success.

Without it, the connector hammers the endpoint every few seconds, possibly triggering rate-limit blocks that extend the outage.

What to evaluate before investing

• Ask vendors to describe their retry schedule for failed syncs: intervals, maximum attempts, and whether jitter is used.
• Test behavior during a simulated outage window and confirm the connector recovers without manual intervention afterward.
• Check whether retry attempts are logged and visible, so your team can distinguish transient noise from persistent failure.

Limitations and tradeoffs

Aggressive backoff is safe but slow: a record that fails repeatedly may take hours to retry successfully. If your workflows need fast recovery, ask how failed items can be manually re-prioritized.