Probe
A probe is an automated health check that evaluates the availability, state, liveness, or readiness of a service or container.
Kubernetes for Developers
A liveness or readiness probe is a Kubernetes health check that determines whether a container should be restarted or can receive traffic.
- How it is used
- Uses health checks to restart unhealthy containers and control whether containers receive live traffic.
- How deep it goes
- Explains HTTP, TCP, and Bash-script implementations with success criteria and a readiness configuration, without broader probe lifecycle details.
- Examples
- Uses a /healthz endpoint, an SMTP TCP service, Bash checks for batch jobs, and a port 25 readiness configuration.
- What you can do after
- Operate/configure Kubernetes health checks using HTTP endpoints, TCP connections, or Bash scripts matched to the workload.
Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition
A container probe is a Kubernetes health test that evaluates a container using a network request, command, or other configured check.
- How it is used
- Protects Service traffic and application availability by detecting unhealthy containers in Kubernetes Pods.
- How deep it goes
- Explains HTTP, TCP, and command checks plus readiness and liveness actions, without detailing probe execution internals.
- Examples
- Uses an HTTP /healthz endpoint, five- and twenty-second intervals, Deployment YAML, kubectl apply, and Pod watching.
- What you can do after
- Operate/configure Kubernetes Deployments with readiness and liveness probes, then verify Pod behavior using kubectl.
Read how Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition explains probe →
Related concepts
- HTTPuses · HTTP is a standardized application-layer protocol that defines request-and-response messages for transferring resource representations between networked systems.
- Kubernetesused by · Kubernetes is an open-source platform for orchestrating and automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized workloads across computing clusters.
- curluses · curl is a command-line tool for transferring data to or from network resources using supported protocols; the name also refers to its transfer library, libcurl.
- shell scriptuses · Bash is a Unix command-line shell and scripting language for executing commands interactively and through scripts.
- liveness checkincludes · A liveness check is an automated health test that determines whether a running workload remains functional or should be restarted.
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