Scheduling and Retries

Fluent Bit has an engine that helps to coordinate the data ingestion from input plugins. The engine calls the scheduler to decide when it's time to flush the data through one or multiple output plugins. The scheduler flushes new data at a fixed number of seconds, and retries when asked.

When an output plugin gets called to flush some data, after processing that data it can notify the engine using these possible return statuses:

• OK: Data successfully processed and flushed.

• Retry: If a retry is requested, the engine asks the scheduler to retry flushing that data. The scheduler decides how many seconds to wait before retry.

• Error: An unrecoverable error occurred and the engine shouldn't try to flush that data again.

Configure wait time for retry

The scheduler provides two configuration options, called scheduler.cap and scheduler.base, which can be set in the Service section. These determine the waiting time before a retry happens.

Key	Description	Default
scheduler.cap	Set a maximum retry time in seconds. Supported in v1.8.7 or later.	2000
scheduler.base	Set a base of exponential backoff. Supported in v1.8.7 or later.	5

The scheduler.base determines the lower bound of time and the scheduler.cap determines the upper bound for each retry.

Fluent Bit uses an exponential backoff and jitter algorithm to determine the waiting time before a retry. The waiting time is a random number between a configurable upper and lower bound. For a detailed explanation of the exponential backoff and jitter algorithm, see Exponential Backoff And Jitter.

For example:

For the Nth retry, the lower bound of the random number will be:

base

The upper bound will be:

min(base * (Nth power of 2), cap)

For example:

When base is set to 3 and cap is set to 30:

First retry: The lower bound will be 3. The upper bound will be 3 * 2 = 6. The waiting time will be a random number between (3, 6).

Second retry: The lower bound will be 3. The upper bound will be 3 * (2 * 2) = 12. The waiting time will be a random number between (3, 12).

Third retry: The lower bound will be 3. The upper bound will be 3 * (2 * 2 * 2) =24. The waiting time will be a random number between (3, 24).

Fourth retry: The lower bound will be 3, because 3 * (2 * 2 * 2 * 2) = 48 > 30. The upper bound will be 30. The waiting time will be a random number between (3, 30).

Wait time example

The following example configures the scheduler.base as 3 seconds and scheduler.cap as 30 seconds.

[SERVICE]
    Flush            5
    Daemon           off
    Log_Level        debug
    scheduler.base   3
    scheduler.cap    30

The waiting time will be:

Nth retry	Waiting time range (seconds)
1	(3, 6)
2	(3, 12)
3	(3, 24)
4	(3, 30)

Configure retries

The scheduler provides a configuration option called Retry_Limit, which can be set independently for each output section. This option lets you disable retries or impose a limit to try N times and then discard the data after reaching that limit:

	Value	Description
Retry_Limit	N	Integer value to set the maximum number of retries allowed. N must be >= 1 (default: 1)
Retry_Limit	no_limits or False	When set there no limit for the number of retries that the scheduler can do.
Retry_Limit	no_retries	When set, retries are disabled and scheduler doesn't try to send data to the destination if it failed the first time.

Retry example

The following example configures two outputs, where the HTTP plugin has an unlimited number of retries, and the Elasticsearch plugin have a limit of 5 retries:

[OUTPUT]
    Name        http
    Host        192.168.5.6
    Port        8080
    Retry_Limit False

[OUTPUT]
    Name            es
    Host            192.168.5.20
    Port            9200
    Logstash_Format On
    Retry_Limit     5