Definition
An API endpoint that reports whether a service is running and able to serve requests, used by load balancers and monitoring systems.
In Depth
Health checks range from simple liveness probes ('the process is running') to readiness probes ('the database is connected and migrations are current'). Load balancers use health checks to route traffic away from unhealthy instances.
Example Usage
The /api/health/ endpoint checks that Django can connect to PostgreSQL and returns a 200 status, used by the Buildkite smoke test.
Business Context
Health checks are the first line of defense against outages — they enable automatic recovery by routing traffic away from failed instances.
Related Terms
Blue-Green Deployment
A deployment strategy that maintains two identical production environments, routing traffic to the n...
CI/CD
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment - automated software delivery practices.
Environment Variable
A dynamic value stored outside the application code that configures behavior across different enviro...
Load Balancer
A system that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure no single serve...
Log Aggregation
Collecting, centralizing, and analyzing log data from multiple services and servers in a single sear...
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