System health checking¶

System health checking (often referred to simply as health) is a fundamental component of modern monitoring strategies. It serves as a distinct pillar alongside Metrics, logs, and Tracing to provide a comprehensive view of system status^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability.md].

Core Components¶

In the context of Monitoring and Observability, health checking provides a real-time assessment of system availability and functionality. It is typically categorized under four primary data models:

• Metrics: Quantitative measurements of system behavior over time.
• Logs: Detailed, discrete records of specific events or transactions within the system.
• Tracing: The tracking of a request's path through a distributed system (also known as the call chain).
• Health: The specific mechanism or endpoint used to verify the current status or "liveness" of a service^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability.md].

Related Concepts¶

• Monitoring and Observability
• Metrics
• [[Logging]]
• Tracing

Sources¶

^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability.md]