Apollo Incident Runbook
Overview
Structured incident response for Apollo.io API failures. Covers severity classification, quick diagnosis, circuit breaker implementation, graceful degradation, and post-incident review. Apollo's public status page is at status.apollo.io.
Prerequisites
- Valid Apollo API key
- Access to monitoring dashboards
Instructions
Step 1: Classify Severity
Severity | Criteria | Response Time
---------+---------------------------------------------+--------------
P1 | Apollo API completely unreachable | 15 min
| All enrichments/searches returning 5xx |
P2 | Partial failures (>10% error rate) | 1 hour
| Rate limiting blocking critical workflows |
P3 | Intermittent errors (<10%), degraded latency | 4 hours
| Non-critical endpoint failures |
P4 | Cosmetic issues, minor data inconsistencies | Next sprint
Step 2: Quick Diagnosis Script
#!/bin/bash
# scripts/apollo-diagnosis.sh
set -euo pipefail
echo "=== Apollo Quick Diagnosis $(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ) ==="
# 1. Check Apollo status page
echo -e "\n--- Status Page ---"
curl -s https://status.apollo.io/api/v2/status.json 2>/dev/null | \
python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(f'Status: {d[\"status\"][\"description\"]}')" \
2>/dev/null || echo "Could not reach status page"
# 2. Test auth
echo -e "\n--- Auth Check ---"
curl -s -w "HTTP %{http_code} in %{time_total}s\n" \
-H "x-api-key: $APOLLO_API_KEY" \
"https://api.apollo.io/api/v1/auth/health" | head -1
# 3. Test people search (free endpoint)
echo -e "\n--- People Search ---"
curl -s -w "HTTP %{http_code} in %{time_total}s\n" -o /dev/null \
-X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "x-api-key: $APOLLO_API_KEY" \
-d '{"q_organization_domains_list":["apollo.io"],"per_page":1}' \
"https://api.apollo.io/api/v1/mixed_people/api_search"
# 4. Check rate limit headers
echo -e "\n--- Rate Limits ---"
curl -s -D - -o /dev/null \
-X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "x-api-key: $APOLLO_API_KEY" \
-d '{"q_organization_domains_list":["apollo.io"],"per_page":1}' \
"https://api.apollo.io/api/v1/mixed_people/api_search" 2>/dev/null | grep -i "x-rate-limit" || echo "No rate limit headers"
# 5. DNS resolution
echo -e "\n--- DNS ---"
dig +short api.apollo.io 2>/dev/null || nslookup api.apollo.io 2>/dev/null || echo "DNS lookup failed"
Step 3: Circuit Breaker
// src/resilience/circuit-breaker.ts
type State = 'closed' | 'open' | 'half-open';
export class CircuitBreaker {
private state: State = 'closed';
private failures = 0;
private lastFailure = 0;
private halfOpenSuccesses = 0;
constructor(
private failureThreshold: number = 5,
private resetTimeoutMs: number = 60_000,
private requiredSuccesses: number = 3,
) {}
async execute<T>(fn: () => Promise<T>, fallback?: () => T): Promise<T> {
if (this.state === 'open') {
if (Date.now() - this.lastFailure > this.resetTimeoutMs) {
this.state = 'half-open';
this.halfOpenSuccesses = 0;
} else {
if (fallback) return fallback();
throw new Error(`Circuit OPEN — Apollo calls blocked for ${Math.round((this.resetTimeoutMs - (Date.now() - this.lastFailure)) / 1000)}s`);
}
}
try {
const result = await fn();
if (this.state === 'half-open') {
this.halfOpenSuccesses++;
if (this.halfOpenSuccesses >= this.requiredSuccesses) {
this.state = 'closed';
this.failures = 0;
}
} else {
this.failures = 0;
}
return result;
} catch (err) {
this.failures++;
this.lastFailure = Date.now();
if (this.failures >= this.failureThreshold) this.state = 'open';
if (fallback) return fallback();
throw err;
}
}
get status() { return { state: this.state, failures: this.failures }; }
}
Step 4: Graceful Degradation by Severity
import { CircuitBreaker } from './circuit-breaker';
const breaker = new CircuitBreaker(5, 60_000);
// P1: Total outage — serve cached data
async function handleP1() {
console.error('[P1] Apollo API unreachable');
return breaker.execute(
() => client.post('/mixed_people/api_search', { per_page: 1 }),
() => {
console.warn('Serving cached search results');
return { data: { people: [], source: 'cache', degraded: true } };
},
);
}
// P2: Partial failures — reduce load
async function handleP2() {
console.warn('[P2] Apollo degraded — reducing concurrency');
// Disable bulk enrichment, reduce search concurrency to 1
// Continue serving search from cache where possible
}
// P3: Intermittent — retry with backoff
async function handleP3() {
console.info('[P3] Intermittent errors — backoff enabled');
// Retry with longer delays, log for monitoring
}
Step 5: Post-Incident Review Template
## Post-Incident Review: Apollo Integration
**Incident ID:** INC-YYYY-MM-DD-NNN
**Severity:** P1 / P2 / P3
**Duration:** HH:MM start to HH:MM resolved (X minutes)
**Apollo Status Page:** Reporting outage? Y/N
### Timeline
| Time (UTC) | Event |
|------------|-------|
| HH:MM | First alert fired (source: Prometheus/PagerDuty) |
| HH:MM | On-call acknowledged |
| HH:MM | Root cause identified |
| HH:MM | Mitigation applied (circuit breaker / cache fallback) |
| HH:MM | Apollo API restored |
| HH:MM | Circuit breaker closed, normal operations resumed |
### Impact
- Searches affected: N requests failed / served from cache
- Enrichments failed: N (credits not consumed)
- Sequences paused: N contacts delayed
- Revenue impact: $X (estimated pipeline delay)
### Root Cause
[Apollo-side outage / rate limiting / key rotation / network issue]
### Action Items
- [ ] Add/improve circuit breaker coverage (owner, due)
- [ ] Increase cache TTL for critical data (owner, due)
- [ ] Add alerting for [specific gap] (owner, due)
Output
- Severity classification matrix (P1-P4) with response times
- Bash diagnostic script (status page, auth, search, rate limits, DNS)
- Circuit breaker with closed/open/half-open states
- Graceful degradation procedures per severity level
- Post-incident review template
Error Handling
| Issue | Escalation | |-------|------------| | P1 > 15 min | Page on-call, open Apollo support ticket | | P2 > 2 hours | Notify engineering management | | Recurring P3 | Promote to P2 tracking issue | | Apollo outage | Verify at status.apollo.io, enable cache fallback |
Resources
Next Steps
Proceed to apollo-data-handling for data management.