Secrets Manager
Stores and rotates secrets and credentials.
Problem it solves: Hard-coded secrets and config drift.
Where it sits: Read at startup or cached by services.
When to use
- Always.
When not to use
- On the hot request path without caching.
Failure modes
- Bad config push is a common outage cause.
Metrics to watch
- Config change rate
Configuration in Labs (illustrative defaults)
- Base service time (ms) = 5 — Processing time per request at zero load. Queueing adds to this as utilisation rises.
- Availability (0–1) = 0.9999 — Probability a call to this dependency succeeds (illustrative).
Vendor examples (pattern only): AWS managed service. Simulated as a generic “Secrets / config”.