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What readiness and liveness change
Express describes health checks as a way for a load balancer to decide whether an application instance can accept requests. Kubernetes makes the distinction operational: readiness probes determine when a container is ready to accept traffic, while liveness probes determine when to restart a container.
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| Check | What failure means | Kubernetes response | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Readiness | The instance should not receive normal service traffic right now. | Marks the Pod unready and removes it from the matching Service endpoints. The container is not restarted solely because readiness failed. | Required initialization is incomplete or the instance is temporarily unable to serve safely. |
| Liveness | The process is not making progress and cannot recover on its own. | After failures exceed the configured tolerance, Kubernetes restarts the container. | A narrow, unrecoverable process failure, such as a deadlock. |
| Startup | The application has not completed startup within its allowance. | Until startup succeeds, Kubernetes does not run readiness or liveness probes. If the startup threshold is exceeded, the container is killed and handled according to its restart policy. | Slow initialization that needs more time before regular probes begin. |
These checks do not identify why an instance is unhealthy. They tell Kubernetes how to act on the reported state; diagnosis requires the surrounding application and infrastructure evidence.
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Implement matching Express endpoints
The Node.js Reference Architecture demonstrates small Express handlers at /readyz and /livez, each returning HTTP 200 and JSON with status ok. Its Kubernetes configuration points the corresponding probes to those exact paths on port 3000. You can use the requested names /ready and /live instead, but the Express routes and Kubernetes manifest must agree.
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Keep both handlers fast and predictable. Readiness can reflect required initialization and whether the instance can currently serve requests safely. Liveness should test only whether the process is irrecoverably stuck; it should not fail merely because a dependency is unavailable or the service is under ordinary load. Otherwise, Kubernetes may restart healthy-but-strained containers, increasing load and worsening recovery. Express recommends establishing management endpoints before metric instrumentation so health-check requests are not counted as ordinary instrumented application traffic.
For HTTP probes, Kubernetes treats status codes from 200 through 399 inclusive as success. A response outside that range is a failed probe. See the official probe configuration guide for HTTP behavior and configuration examples.
Configure probes around actual startup and failure behavior
Use a startup probe when initialization may outlast the normal readiness or liveness schedule. Kubernetes waits for startup success before running those ongoing probes. Set its allowance to cover realistic slow starts; the documented configuration model uses failureThreshold × periodSeconds as the startup window. Choose values based on observed startup behavior rather than copying an example blindly.
Kubernetes documentation accessed October 7, 2026 lists defaults of periodSeconds: 10, timeoutSeconds: 1, and failureThreshold: 3. Defaults are version-sensitive, so check the documentation for the Kubernetes version you run before relying on them. The same guidance advises retaining cluster defaults unless the application needs more startup time or a different allowance for liveness responses under load.
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Set readiness and liveness thresholds for different purposes: readiness should withdraw traffic when an instance cannot serve, while liveness should tolerate recoverable conditions and trigger a restart only for a failure that will not resolve itself. Tune timeouts and thresholds to the application’s response characteristics rather than making a dependency outage a reason to restart every replica.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Use probe evidence to reconstruct an interruption
For an incident timeline, align probe outcomes with Pod readiness changes, container restart counts, request errors, and evidence from dependencies. A readiness failure can explain why traffic stopped reaching an instance; a liveness failure followed by a restart can explain a process replacement. Neither event alone establishes the original cause.
- Record when the endpoint began returning a failing status and when it recovered.
- Correlate that interval with Kubernetes probe events, Pod readiness state, and container restarts.
- Compare it with request errors and relevant dependency or infrastructure signals.
- Distinguish traffic removal from process restart when describing what Kubernetes did.
This method helps explain service behavior during an edtech interruption, but the cited framework and Kubernetes documentation do not establish facts about any specific outage or quantify effects on learners.
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Official references
- Express: Health Checks and Graceful Shutdown
- Kubernetes: Liveness, Readiness, and Startup Probes
- Node.js Reference Architecture: Health Checks
- Kubernetes: Configure Liveness, Readiness and Startup Probes
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