Mastering Kubernetes Health Probes: Ensuring Robust and Reliable Services

Introduction One of the key factors in Kubernetes’ success is its ability to facilitate the development and deployment of resilient and highly available applications. This is achieved through a combination of features, including its containerization approach, flexible scaling mechanisms, and robust health check mechanisms. As a container orchestration system it is essential for Kubernetes to keep track of the health of the various nodes, pods and containers in the cluster. Kubernetes uses health checks to monitor the health of applications, containers & pods running in a cluster. These health checks are a critical part of the platform and are used by the Kubernetes control plane to ensure that your applications are not just up and running, but also ready and capable of performing their intended functions effectively. Health checks allows kubernetes to take appropriate corrective action by replacing unhealthy components and route traffic to healthy ones. This functionality is critical and provides the high availability and resiliency features of kubernetes. ...

October 25, 2023 · (updated December 21, 2024) · 10 min · Pradeep Loganathan