A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn’t even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
Leslie Lamport
Graceful Shutdown in Go: Properly Stopping Services Under Load
In production environments, especially in Kubernetes, services are constantly being stopped and started: deploying new versions, scaling, node switching. Improper shutdown leads to lost requests, unsent data, and desynchronized state.
Graceful shutdown is not just handling SIGTERM. It’s a comprehensive termination strategy that guarantees:
- Completion of active request processing
- Proper closure of database and cache connections
- Saving intermediate results
- Sending all metrics and logs
Let’s explore how to implement this correctly.
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