Health Checks

Why Health Checks Matters

Spring Boot Actuator HealthIndicator provides custom health checks for application-specific dependencies (external APIs, message queues, file systems). In Kubernetes production clusters, custom health checks enable accurate liveness/readiness probes—removing pods from service when dependent systems fail while allowing independent component monitoring.

Problem: Generic /actuator/health insufficient for application-specific dependency monitoring.

Solution: Custom HealthIndicator implementations with Kubernetes probe integration.

Implementation Example

// Implementation details for health-checks
// See full guide for comprehensive examples

Production Configuration

# Configuration for health-checks
# See full guide for detailed configuration

Production Patterns

Best Practices:

• Follow Spring Boot conventions
• Test in staging before production
• Monitor metrics and health checks
• Use environment-specific configuration

Trade-offs

Production recommendation: Use Spring Boot auto-configuration as default. Manual configuration only for edge cases.

Next Steps

• See related in-the-field guides for comprehensive production patterns