health-checks

You configure liveness and readiness health checks in .NET by registering Microsoft.Extensions.Diagnostics.HealthChecks and mapping /health/live and /health/ready endpoints in Program.cs. This allows orchestrators to verify application responsiveness and traffic readiness.

Liveness probes verify the .NET application is running and responsive, while readiness probes confirm it can serve traffic by checking dependencies. Separating these checks enables robust container orchestration and automatic restarts without dropping active requests.

To include PostgreSQL database connectivity in .NET health checks, register the AspNetCore.HealthChecks.NpgSql dependency. This configures the readiness probe to validate database connections, ensuring the application only serves traffic when dependencies are available.

Yes, you can add custom checks to monitor external API availability in .NET. The health check mechanism supports external service and custom checks, allowing you to verify business logic health and API availability alongside standard database checks.

Yes, you need Microsoft.Extensions.Diagnostics.HealthChecks to expose health endpoints. The Skill requires this package and explicit registration of health checks in the program to successfully expose the /health/live and /health/ready endpoints.

Readiness checks fail during container orchestration when dependencies like PostgreSQL are unavailable. The readiness probe validates external services and database connectivity, ensuring the container orchestrator routes traffic only when the .NET application can handle requests.