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Comments on What should healthcheck of an Web API application actually check?
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What should healthcheck of an Web API application actually check?
I have to add health checks to a rather new application (Web API, not a microservice) and I and a colleague are not agreeing about what other systems I should include in the check. This application is the beginning of the writing of a legacy one (will work side by side for a long transition period).
The following systems to be included are considered:
- the relational database this application is querying
- an external API that the application is querying once a day (sync some identities)
- the legacy application
My opinion is that only the database check should be currently included because it it fails nothing works. For the other systems, if they fail I do not really care, unless the API fails when I need to sync the data.
I am interested in a guideline to understand how dependencies are considered when building the health check functionality for an API.
Additional details about the usage: currently none of these services will be deployed as microservices (yet) and a failed health-check (actually multiple in a row, as configured in a monitoring system) will trigger an e-mail notification. Naturally, I would like to minimize the false positive failed health checks.
The debate is whether to include dependencies such as the external API in the check since I only use it once a day. My opinion is that my system should not care whether if it fails, as long as I can sync my data when I need it, but I have never designed any serious monitoring for an app and I might be wrong with this one.
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I am interested in a guideline to understand how dependencies are considered when building the healthcheck functionality for an API.
Like any functionality, the implementation of this feature should be guided by specific requirements. Who will be using that feature? What for?
For instance, if this healthcheck is an endpoint for a kubernetes liveness probe (which causes an automatic restart of the pod if it deems itself unhealthy), including external systems doesn't make sense, because restarting your app won't fix these systems.
On the other hand, if the health check is used by an actual human, they might be able to interpret a more nuanced response, and prefer being informed when optional dependencies fail.
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