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Worker starvation under high retry load with default prefetch settings

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performanceUpdated Nov 21, 2025(via Exa)
Technologies:
How to detect:

Default prefetch settings cause worker starvation when retry rates are high. Workers become idle while retried messages accumulate in queues, reducing effective throughput and increasing latency.

Recommended action:

Set prefetch_multiplier=1 to prevent worker starvation under retry-heavy workloads. This ensures workers process messages one at a time, preventing queue buildup when retries are frequent.