SYSE.38:2 - Problem

“The platform is down” can conceal several different failures: a request never entered, work is waiting, a provider failed, a runtime changed only partly, or the result was produced but not returned. Blind retry can duplicate resources or repeat irreversible effects.

Diagnosis can also become an uncontrolled sequence of restarts and configuration changes. When the service later recovers, nobody knows which explanation survived, whether the original task completed or whether data was restored.