High 5xx error rate indicates service degradation
criticalavailabilityUpdated Mar 16, 2026(via Exa)
Sources
Technologies:
How to detect:
5xx error rate exceeds 1% of total requests for 5 minutes, indicating significant service failures affecting users
Recommended action:
Alert on symptoms (error rate, latency) not causes (CPU usage) to reduce noise by 80%. Check application logs for error details, review recent deployments, investigate database or downstream service failures.