A .NET API on Azure occasionally gets transient Azure SQL connection errors. How would you handle retries safely?

How should a .NET API handle Azure SQL transient faults?

Explains transient database errors, retry strategy, EF Core execution strategy, idempotency, timeouts, and avoiding retry storms.

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I would handle Azure SQL transient faults with limited retries, backoff, and jitter, not infinite retry loops. The code needs clear command timeouts and a distinction between transient connection or throttling errors and permanent failures like bad SQL or constraint violations. For writes, I would only retry safely when the operation is idempotent or when the code can detect whether the first attempt already succeeded.

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Transient fault handling, Azure SQL connectivity, EF Core retries, idempotency, timeouts, transactions, and production monitoring.

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Azure SQL connections can fail briefly during throttling, failover, or network disruption. Bounded retries can absorb those events, but unsafe write repetition and retry storms can damage correctness and database health.
I would handle Azure SQL transient faults with limited retries, backoff, and jitter, not infinite retry loops. The code needs clear command timeouts and a distinction between transient connection or throttling errors and permanent failures like bad SQL or constraint violations. For writes, I would only retry safely when the operation is idempotent or when the code can detect whether the first attempt already succeeded.
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In a .NET API I would use the SQL client or EF Core execution strategy where appropriate, but I would still think about transaction boundaries and side effects. Retrying a whole operation that sends an email, publishes a message, or charges a card can duplicate work if the database commit status is uncertain. I would monitor retry counts, latency, connection pool pressure, deadlocks, throttling, and database DTU or vCore pressure before increasing retry settings. Retries are a resilience tool, not a cure for a saturated database.

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Retrying every database error as if it is transient.
No backoff, jitter, or retry limit.
Retrying writes without idempotency or state checks.
Increasing retry count instead of investigating saturation.

A .NET API on Azure occasionally gets transient Azure SQL connection errors. How would you handle retries safely?

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