Skip to content
Kong Docs are moving soon! Our docs are migrating to a new home. You'll be automatically redirected to the new site in the future. In the meantime, view this page on the new site!
Kong Logo | Kong Docs Logo
  • Docs
    • Explore the API Specs
      View all API Specs View all API Specs View all API Specs arrow image
    • Documentation
      API Specs
      Kong Gateway
      Lightweight, fast, and flexible cloud-native API gateway
      Kong Konnect
      Single platform for SaaS end-to-end connectivity
      Kong AI Gateway
      Multi-LLM AI Gateway for GenAI infrastructure
      Kong Mesh
      Enterprise service mesh based on Kuma and Envoy
      decK
      Helps manage Kong’s configuration in a declarative fashion
      Kong Ingress Controller
      Works inside a Kubernetes cluster and configures Kong to proxy traffic
      Kong Gateway Operator
      Manage your Kong deployments on Kubernetes using YAML Manifests
      Insomnia
      Collaborative API development platform
  • Plugin Hub
    • Explore the Plugin Hub
      View all plugins View all plugins View all plugins arrow image
    • Functionality View all View all arrow image
      View all plugins
      AI's icon
      AI
      Govern, secure, and control AI traffic with multi-LLM AI Gateway plugins
      Authentication's icon
      Authentication
      Protect your services with an authentication layer
      Security's icon
      Security
      Protect your services with additional security layer
      Traffic Control's icon
      Traffic Control
      Manage, throttle and restrict inbound and outbound API traffic
      Serverless's icon
      Serverless
      Invoke serverless functions in combination with other plugins
      Analytics & Monitoring's icon
      Analytics & Monitoring
      Visualize, inspect and monitor APIs and microservices traffic
      Transformations's icon
      Transformations
      Transform request and responses on the fly on Kong
      Logging's icon
      Logging
      Log request and response data using the best transport for your infrastructure
  • Support
  • Community
  • Kong Academy
Get a Demo Start Free Trial
Kong Mesh
2.6.x
  • Home icon
  • Kong Mesh
  • Policies
  • Health Check
github-edit-pageEdit this page
report-issueReport an issue
  • Kong Gateway
  • Kong Konnect
  • Kong Mesh
  • Kong AI Gateway
  • Plugin Hub
  • decK
  • Kong Ingress Controller
  • Kong Gateway Operator
  • Insomnia
  • Kuma

  • Docs contribution guidelines
  • dev
  • 2.10.x (latest)
  • 2.9.x
  • 2.8.x
  • 2.7.x (LTS)
  • 2.6.x
  • 2.5.x
  • 2.4.x
  • 2.3.x
  • 2.2.x
  • Introduction
    • About service meshes
    • Overview of Kong Mesh
    • How Kong Mesh works
    • Architecture
    • Stages of software availability
    • Version support policy
    • Mesh requirements
    • Release notes
  • Quickstart
    • Deploy Kong Mesh on Kubernetes
    • Deploy Kong Mesh on Universal
  • Kong Mesh in Production
    • Overview
    • Deployment topologies
      • Overview
      • Single-zone deployment
      • Multi-zone deployment
    • Install kumactl
    • Use Kong Mesh
    • Control plane deployment
      • Kong Mesh license
      • Deploy a single-zone control plane
      • Deploy a multi-zone global control plane
      • Zone Ingress
      • Zone Egress
      • Configure zone proxy authentication
      • Control plane configuration reference
      • Systemd
      • Kubernetes
      • kumactl
    • Configuring your Mesh and multi-tenancy
    • Data plane configuration
      • Data plane proxy
      • Configure the data plane on Kubernetes
      • Configure the data plane on Universal
      • Configure the Kong Mesh CNI
      • Configure transparent proxying
      • IPv6 support
    • Secure your deployment
      • Manage secrets
      • Authentication with the API server
      • Authentication with the data plane proxy
      • Configure data plane proxy membership
      • Secure access across services
      • Kong Mesh RBAC
      • FIPS support
    • Kong Mesh user interface
    • Inspect API
      • Matched policies
      • Affected data plane proxies
      • Envoy proxy configuration
    • Upgrades and tuning
      • Upgrade Kong Mesh
      • Performance fine-tuning
      • Version specific upgrade notes
    • Control Plane Configuration
      • Modifying the configuration
      • Inspecting the configuration
      • Store
  • Using Kong Mesh
    • Zero Trust & Application Security
      • Mutual TLS
      • External Service
    • Resiliency & Failover
      • Dataplane Health
      • Service Health Probes
    • Managing incoming traffic with gateways
      • How ingress works in Kuma
      • Delegated gateways
      • Built-in gateways
      • Running built-in gateway pods on Kubernetes
      • Configuring built-in listeners
      • Configuring built-in routes
      • Using the Kubernetes Gateway API
    • Observability
      • Demo setup
      • Control plane metrics
      • Configuring Prometheus
      • Configuring Grafana
      • Configuring Datadog
      • Observability in multi-zone
    • Route & Traffic shaping
      • Protocol support in Kong Mesh
    • Service Discovery & Networking
      • Service Discovery
      • DNS
      • Non-mesh traffic
      • Transparent Proxying
  • Policies
    • Introduction
    • Applying Policies
    • Understanding TargetRef policies
    • MeshAccessLog
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshCircuitBreaker
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshFaultInjection
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshHealthCheck
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshHTTPRoute
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
      • Merging
    • MeshMetric
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Prometheus
      • OpenTelemetry
      • Examples
    • MeshProxyPatch
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
      • Merging
    • MeshRateLimit
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshRetry
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshTCPRoute
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
      • Route policies with different types targeting the same destination
    • MeshTimeout
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshTrace
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshTrafficPermission
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshLoadBalancingStrategy
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshOPA (beta)
    • MeshGlobalRateLimit (beta)
    • Previous Policies
      • General notes about Kong Mesh policies
      • How Kong Mesh chooses the right policy to apply
      • Traffic Permissions
      • Traffic Route
      • Traffic Metrics
      • Traffic Trace
      • Traffic Log
      • Locality-aware Load Balancing
      • Fault Injection
      • Health Check
      • Circuit Breaker
      • Retry
      • Timeout
      • Rate Limit
      • Virtual Outbound
      • MeshGatewayRoute
      • OPA policy
  • Guides
    • Federate zone control plane
    • Add a builtin Gateway
    • Add Kong as a delegated Gateway
    • Upgrading Transparent Proxy
  • Enterprise Features
    • Overview
    • HashiCorp Vault CA
    • Amazon ACM Private CA
    • cert-manager Private CA
    • OPA policy support
    • MeshOPA (beta)
    • Multi-zone authentication
    • FIPS support
    • Certificate Authority rotation
    • Role-Based Access Control
    • Red Hat
      • UBI Images
      • Red Hat OpenShift Quickstart
    • Windows Support
    • ECS Support
    • Auditing
    • MeshGlobalRateLimit (beta)
  • Reference
    • HTTP API
    • Kubernetes annotations and labels
    • Kuma data collection
    • Control plane configuration reference
    • Envoy proxy template
  • Community
    • Contribute to Kuma
enterprise-switcher-icon Switch to OSS
On this pageOn this page
  • Usage
    • Examples
    • HTTP
    • TCP
  • Matching
  • All options
You are browsing documentation for an older version. See the latest documentation here.

Health Check

New to Kuma? You don’t need this policy, check MeshHealthCheck instead. If you want to use the HealthCheck policy, remember that it requires the TrafficRoute policy to function properly.

Health Check is an outbound policy. Dataplanes whose configuration is modified are in the sources matcher.

This policy enables Kong Mesh to keep track of the health of every data plane proxy, with the goal of minimizing the number of failed requests in case a data plane proxy is temporarily unhealthy.

By creating an HealthCheck resource we can instruct a data plane proxy to keep track of the health status for any other data plane proxy. When health-checks are properly configured, a data plane proxy will never send a request to another data plane proxy that is considered unhealthy. When an unhealthy proxy returns to a healthy state, Kong Mesh will resume sending requests to it again.

This policy provides active checks. If you want to configure passive checks, please utilize the Circuit Breaker policy. Data plane proxies with active checks will explicitly send requests to other data plane proxies to determine if target proxies are healthy or not. This mode generates extra traffic to other proxies and services as described in the policy configuration.

Usage

As usual, we can apply sources and destinations selectors to determine how health-checks will be performed across our data plane proxies.

The HealthCheck policy supports both L4/TCP (default) and L7/HTTP checks.

Examples

Kubernetes
Universal
apiVersion: kuma.io/v1alpha1
kind: HealthCheck
mesh: default
metadata:
  name: web-to-backend-check
spec:
  sources:
  - match:
      kuma.io/service: web_default_svc_80
  destinations:
  - match:
      kuma.io/service: backend_default_svc_80
  conf:
    interval: 10s
    timeout: 2s
    unhealthyThreshold: 3
    healthyThreshold: 1
    initialJitter: 5s # optional
    intervalJitter: 6s # optional
    intervalJitterPercent: 10 # optional
    healthyPanicThreshold: 60 # optional, by default 50
    failTrafficOnPanic: true # optional, by default false
    noTrafficInterval: 10s # optional, by default 60s
    eventLogPath: "/tmp/health-check.log" # optional
    alwaysLogHealthCheckFailures: true # optional, by default false
    reuseConnection: false # optional, by default true
    tcp: # only one of tcp or http can be defined
      send: Zm9v
      receive:
      - YmFy
      - YmF6
    http:
      path: /health
      requestHeadersToAdd:
      - append: false
        header:
          key: Content-Type
          value: application/json
      - header:
          key: Accept
          value: application/json
      expectedStatuses: [200, 201]

We will apply the configuration with kubectl apply -f [..].

type: HealthCheck
name: web-to-backend-check
mesh: default
sources:
- match:
    kuma.io/service: web
destinations:
- match:
    kuma.io/service: backend
conf:
  interval: 10s
  timeout: 2s
  unhealthyThreshold: 3
  healthyThreshold: 1
  initialJitter: 5s # optional
  intervalJitter: 6s # optional
  intervalJitterPercent: 10 # optional
  healthyPanicThreshold: 60 # optional, by default 50
  failTrafficOnPanic: true # optional, by default false
  noTrafficInterval: 10s # optional, by default 60s
  eventLogPath: "/tmp/health-check.log" # optional
  alwaysLogHealthCheckFailures: true # optional, by default false
  reuseConnection: false # optional, by default true
  tcp: # only one of tcp or http can be defined
    send: Zm9v
    receive:
    - YmFy
    - YmF6
  http:
    path: /health
    requestHeadersToAdd:
    - append: false
      header:
        key: Content-Type
        value: application/json
    - header:
        key: Accept
        value: application/json
    expectedStatuses: [200, 201]

We will apply the configuration with kumactl apply -f [..] or via the HTTP API.

HTTP

HTTP health checks are executed using HTTP 2

  • path - HTTP path which will be requested during the health checks
  • expectedStatuses (optional) - list of status codes which should be considered as a healthy during the checks
    • only statuses in the range [100, 600) are allowed
    • by default, when this property is not provided only responses with status code 200 are being considered healthy
  • requestHeadersToAdd (optional) - list of headers which should be added to every health check request:
    • append (default, optional) - should the value of the provided header be appended to already existing headers (if present)
    • header:
      • key - the name of the header
      • value (optional) - the value of the header

TCP

  • send - Base64 encoded content of the message which should be sent during the health checks
  • receive list of Base64 encoded blocks of strings which should be found in the returning message which should be considered as healthy
    • when checking the response, “fuzzy” matching is performed such that each block must be found, and in the order specified, but not necessarily contiguous;
    • if receive section won’t be provided or will be empty, checks will be performed as “connect only” and will be marked as successful when TCP connection will be successfully established.

Matching

HealthCheck is an Outbound Connection Policy. The only supported value for destinations.match is kuma.io/service.

All options

Thank you for your feedback.
Was this page useful?
Too much on your plate? close cta icon
More features, less infrastructure with Kong Konnect. 1M requests per month for free.
Try it for Free
  • Kong
    Powering the API world

    Increase developer productivity, security, and performance at scale with the unified platform for API management, service mesh, and ingress controller.

    • Products
      • Kong Konnect
      • Kong Gateway Enterprise
      • Kong Gateway
      • Kong Mesh
      • Kong Ingress Controller
      • Kong Insomnia
      • Product Updates
      • Get Started
    • Documentation
      • Kong Konnect Docs
      • Kong Gateway Docs
      • Kong Mesh Docs
      • Kong Insomnia Docs
      • Kong Konnect Plugin Hub
    • Open Source
      • Kong Gateway
      • Kuma
      • Insomnia
      • Kong Community
    • Company
      • About Kong
      • Customers
      • Careers
      • Press
      • Events
      • Contact
  • Terms• Privacy• Trust and Compliance
© Kong Inc. 2025