Chaos engineering is a testing method used to build resilience and reliability in complex software systems. The core principle behind chaos engineering is that complex, modern software systems fail in unpredictable ways. By proactively and intentionally injecting faults like terminating servers or inducing latency, chaos engineering helps uncover vulnerabilities before they lead to outages.
The general approach is to hypothesize potential failure points, design controlled experiments to test those failure points, run the experiments in production, and use the results to improve the system. These experiments reveal weaknesses and allow engineers to address them, increasing the system’s resilience against turbulent conditions it may face.
Chaos engineering injects real-world failure scenarios into the system, complementing other testing methods focused on individual services and components. The insights gained give companies confidence that their systems will perform and recover as expected during inevitable failures. Overall, chaos engineering is the practice of proactively inducing controlled chaos in complex systems to build resilience.
