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Why Your /health Endpoint Returns OK When a Dependency Is Down

A successful /health response may never contact the database. Learn what health probes actually prove and how to separate readiness from liveness.
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A green /health response proves only that the endpoint’s configured checks passed. If no database or other dependency check is registered and included in that endpoint, the response says nothing about whether those services are reachable. Separate liveness from readiness, then make each probe answer the operational question its caller needs answered.

Why does /health return OK when the database is down?

Because the route name does not define what is tested. In ASP.NET Core, the default health-check setup registers no checks for particular dependencies or subsystems. If the endpoint has no database check to run, it can report healthy while the database is unavailable. Microsoft states: “By default, no specific health checks are registered to test any particular dependency or subsystem.” ASP.NET Core health-check documentation.

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A successful status is therefore meaningful only in relation to the checks behind it and the system consuming the response. A load balancer, orchestrator, or monitoring service may take different actions when a check fails; define that action before deciding what “healthy” should mean.

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What is the difference between liveness and readiness?

Probe Question it answers Typical consequence of failure
Liveness Is this process functioning well enough to keep running? The orchestrator may restart the process.
Readiness Should this instance receive traffic now? The instance may be removed from traffic routing.
Startup Has initialization finished so the other probes can take over? Other probes can be held back while startup is in progress.

These are different decisions, so a deployment that needs both should not make them indistinguishable. A slow but functioning application should not be treated as dead merely because it has not finished initialization. Kubernetes supports startup probes for this case. AWS’s probe guidance explains the roles of liveness, readiness, and startup checks.

Should readiness check the database?

Include a dependency in readiness when its availability is relevant to serving the traffic that readiness represents. If every request this service accepts requires the database, a database connectivity check can help prevent routing requests to an instance that cannot serve them. If the service can handle some requests through a fallback, cache, or other degraded mode, an unconditional database check may reject traffic that the instance could still serve.

Consider the failure’s scope, too. If every replica shares one database, a database outage can make every replica fail the same readiness check at once. That may remove all instances from traffic rather than preserve partial service. A deeper check is not automatically a safer check.

Why should liveness usually avoid external dependencies?

Liveness failure can trigger a restart. If it depends on a shared database or external service, that dependency’s outage can cause otherwise functioning application processes to be restarted repeatedly. Restarting those processes does not repair the dependency and can make recovery harder. Keep liveness focused on whether the application process itself should continue running; use readiness to express whether it should receive the relevant traffic.

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This is a decision rule, not a universal configuration: assess what the probe’s caller does, whether the dependency is essential for the requests in question, and whether replicas share the dependency. AWS specifically advises keeping liveness independent of external factors such as a database and warns that dependency-sensitive readiness can make all pods unready together.

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How to configure health checks in ASP.NET Core

In ASP.NET Core, register health-check services, add checks for the dependencies you need, and map endpoints that evaluate the appropriate checks. Microsoft’s readiness and liveness example demonstrates separate endpoints, including readiness that stays unhealthy until startup work is complete. The framework mechanism is specific to ASP.NET Core; other stacks use their own registration and endpoint configuration.

  1. Choose the operational decision. Decide whether a failed check should cause a restart, stop traffic to one instance, or alert an operator.
  2. Register the dependency checks. Add checks for dependencies that matter to the service’s expected traffic, such as a database, using the ASP.NET Core health-check services.
  3. Map separate endpoints. Configure distinct liveness and readiness endpoints and include only the checks appropriate to each decision.
  4. Account for startup. If initialization is lengthy, use a startup probe in Kubernetes or an appropriate initial-delay strategy so startup is not mistaken for a dead process.
  5. Test failure behavior. Verify what each caller does when an endpoint reports failure, including what happens when a shared dependency fails across replicas.
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What to decide before adding a dependency check

  • Operational consequence: Will failure restart a process, stop traffic to one replica, or alert someone?
  • Request relevance: Is this dependency essential for the traffic represented by the endpoint, or can the service fall back?
  • Failure scope: Do all replicas share the dependency, and could they all fail readiness at once?
  • Startup behavior: Does initialization need a startup probe or initial delay?
  • Caller behavior: Which orchestrator, load balancer, or monitoring system reads the response, and how does it interpret status and HTTP codes?

Timeouts, probe periods, and failure thresholds depend on the environment and workload; there is no universal value established by the cited guidance. Set and validate them for the system that runs the probes.

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Does Kubernetes deprecate /healthz?

The Kubernetes API server has its own /livez and /readyz endpoints. Its documentation says the API server’s /healthz endpoint has been deprecated since Kubernetes v1.16. That statement is about the Kubernetes API server; it does not mean every application endpoint named /health or /healthz is deprecated. See the Kubernetes API health-check documentation.

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