Cloud-Native Microservices With Kubernetes - 2nd Edition

Best Practices for Implementing Health Checks

Implementing health checks is not a complicated task, but it requires some thought about what conditions define the health of your microservice. Every application is different, and the health checks should be tailored to the specific needs of the application. Implementing the right health checks is usually a shared responsibility of the development and operations teams. This is usually a good opportunity to reflect on the architecture and design of the microservice itself.

Here are some other best practices to consider when implementing health checks:

• Define clear health criteria: Identify what “healthy” means for your service—database access, dependencies, resource usage, or key functionality.
• Choose the right probe type: Use HTTP for web services, Exec for internal checks, and TCP for simple port connectivity.
• Tune probe parameters: Set realistic values for startup delays, timeouts, and thresholds that match your app’s behavior.