Cloud Bits: Beyond Pings – Checks for Cloud-Native Reliability – Distributed Computing Musings

Health checks verify if a service is running, while deep checks validate complete functionality by testing end-to-end operations. In cloud-native systems with complex dependencies, health checks should run at regular intervals to detect failures, while deep checks should run during deployments to prevent routing traffic to broken instances. Spring Boot Actuator provides endpoints for implementing both check types, and Kubernetes liveness and readiness probes can be configured to consume these endpoints. Deep checks invoke dependency endpoints and simulate customer flows, while health checks simply verify connectivity. This pattern prevents cascading failures and deployment issues by catching problems before they impact users.