A nightly task pulls currency rates from a third-party service that sometimes returns server errors for a few minutes at a time. The team wants the task to recover from these brief outages without flooding the service. Which Airflow settings fit best?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
A handful of retries spaced by a delay that grows exponentially gives a transient outage time to clear while limiting request volume against the service. Zero retries turns every brief blip into a failed run, huge retry counts with no delay hammer a struggling service, and skipping the task silently drops the day's rates for downstream consumers.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Zero retries makes every brief server error a failed run, which needs a manual rerun for a condition that usually clears within minutes.
- C. Hundreds of immediate retries flood a service that is already struggling, which can prolong the outage. The task still has no pacing between attempts.
- D. Skipping hides the failure and leaves downstream tables without the day's rates. Consumers receive no signal that the data is missing.