Health Check Patterns

Implement health check endpoints that accurately report your service's ability to handle requests. Covers liveness, readiness, and startup probes for Kubernetes and other orchestration platforms.

Usage

Ask about implementing health checks for your service, configuring Kubernetes probes, or checking dependency health.

Examples

• "What is the difference between liveness and readiness probes?"
• "How should my health check verify database connectivity?"
• "Design a health check endpoint for my API service"

Guidelines

• Liveness checks should be lightweight — only verify the process is running
• Readiness checks should verify the service can handle requests, including dependencies
• Do not include heavy operations in health check endpoints
• Return structured JSON with individual dependency status for debugging
• Set appropriate timeouts and failure thresholds for your probes