---
checkId: check.observability.healthchecks
plugin: stellaops.doctor.observability
severity: warn
tags: [observability, healthchecks, readiness, liveness]
---
# Health Check Endpoints

## What It Checks
Evaluates the configured health, readiness, and liveness paths and optionally probes `http://localhost:<port><path>` when a health-check port is configured.

The check warns when endpoints are unreachable, when timeouts are outside the `1s` to `60s` range, or when readiness and liveness collapse onto the same path.

## Why It Matters
Broken health probes turn into bad restart loops, failed rolling upgrades, and misleading orchestration signals.

## Common Causes
- The service exposes `/health` but not `/health/ready` or `/health/live`
- Health-check ports differ from the actual bound HTTP port
- Probe timeout values were copied from another service without validation

## How to Fix

### Docker Compose
```bash
docker compose -f devops/compose/docker-compose.stella-ops.yml exec doctor-web curl -fsS http://localhost:8080/health
docker compose -f devops/compose/docker-compose.stella-ops.yml exec doctor-web curl -fsS http://localhost:8080/health/ready
docker compose -f devops/compose/docker-compose.stella-ops.yml exec doctor-web curl -fsS http://localhost:8080/health/live
```

Set explicit paths and a reasonable timeout:

```yaml
HealthChecks__Path: /health
HealthChecks__ReadinessPath: /health/ready
HealthChecks__LivenessPath: /health/live
HealthChecks__Timeout: 30
```

### Bare Metal / systemd
Verify reverse proxies and firewalls do not block the health port.

### Kubernetes / Helm
Point readiness and liveness probes at separate endpoints whenever startup and steady-state behavior differ.

## Verification
```bash
stella doctor --check check.observability.healthchecks
```

## Related Checks
- `check.core.services.health` - aggregates the underlying ASP.NET health checks when available
- `check.observability.metrics` - shared listener misconfiguration can break both endpoints