Subtle Storm

May 15, 2026 · Backend Development

Key Exam Topics for Architects: Cache Penetration, Cache Breakdown, and Cache Avalanche

The article explains how cache penetration, cache breakdown, and cache avalanche all stem from cache layer failures that let requests flood the database, compares their triggers, impact scopes and risk levels, and presents practical mitigation techniques such as empty‑value caching, Bloom filters, mutex locks, logical expiration, TTL randomization, and multi‑level caching.