On a ship, bulkheads are partitions that divide the hull into watertight compartments. If one compartment is breached and floods, the bulkheads prevent the water from spreading, keeping the rest of the ship safe and afloat.

This powerful principle of containment has a direct parallel in software engineering: the Bulkhead Pattern.

It's a resilience design pattern that isolates system components so that a failure in one doesn't cascade and sink the entire application.

In this article, we will dive deep into the Bulkhead pattern, explaining how it works, why it's a cornerstone of resilient microservices, and how you can apply it to build more robust and fault-tolerant systems.

1. What Is the Bulkhead Pattern?