Learn all about liveness and readiness probes (done right) from Guy Menachem - Solution Architect at Komodor, the first Kubernetes-native troubleshooting platform, with a vast experience working with DBs from old-timey mainframes to cloud-native systems.

1. Komodor <> Epsagon | May 2021
Guy Menahem
Solution Architect @ Komodor
Making Peace With
The Grim Reaper
Liveness & Readiness Probes Done Right

2. Cloud native | March 2021
● A Developer turned Solution Architect
● Working at Komodor, a startup building the
first K8s-native troubleshooting platform
● Love everything in infrastructure: storage,
networks & security - from 70’s era
mainframes to cloud-native
● All about “plan well, sleep well”
Who am I?

3. Investors | January 2021
WTF Are Probes?
Probe Types
● Liveness - When to restart a container
● Readiness - When to send requests
● Startup - When the initial setup is done
Overview
A probe is a diagnostic performed periodically
by the kubelet on a container. To perform a
diagnostic, the kubelet either executes code
within the container, or makes a network
request.

4. Investors | January 2021
WTF Are Probes?
Probes under the hood:
The Happy Flow The Bad Flow

5. Investors | January 2021
WTF Are Probes?
Why Should You Care?
1. Has direct impact on the app’s availability
2. Can be useful when troubleshooting

6. Investors | January 2021
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
1. Undetected Downtime - Your app is down but traffic is being sent to it anyway.
(you forgot to call the Grim Reaper)

7. Investors | January 2021
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
1. Undetected Downtime - Your app is down but traffic is being sent to it anyway.
(you forgot to call the Grim Reaper)
2. Unwanted Downtime - Your app runs well but Kubernetes restarts it continuously
or doesn’t send traffic (you sacrifice an innocent soul to the Reaper)
3. Unexpected Behavour - Your app doesn’t match your needs - startup, delay,
failure tolerance, etc. (you don’t know when to call the Reaper)

8. Cloud native | March 2021
Best Practices
For Kubernetes Probes

9. Investors | January 2021
1. Plan It
● Liveness - Everything is loaded & runs fine
● Liveness - Can recover from external failures
● Readiness - Can serve the users
● Readiness - Fail following external failures

10. Investors | January 2021
2. Configure It
● Configure with failure thresholds
● Make it aligned with your business/service needs

11. Investors | January 2021
3. Code It
● Specific endpoint for each probe
● Understand the state
● Liveness - Everything that’s needed is loaded
● Liveness - Can the app autorecover or it needs help?
● Readiness - All the external services are accessible (DB,
queues, other services)
● Readiness - the main job can be done
● Log everything
● Avoid long startups

12. Troubleshoot Kubernetes
With Confidence

13. Meet
Komodor
Reducing MTTR
A single source of truth to
uncover root causes
quickly.
Empowering Developers
Enable every team
member to troubleshoot
independently.
Simplifying the K8s Chaos
Gain the relevant context
& insights you need to
troubleshoot faster.
We’re a team of devs on a mission to transform K8s troubleshooting by:

14. Search through multiple
tools to find the needle in
the haystack
Use kubectl to estimate your
way to the root cause
The Process of
Troubleshooting K8s Today

15. How Komodor Makes
K8s Troubleshooting Simple
Gain Change Intelligence
Runs automated checks and
delivers remediation suggestions
empowering all responders to
troubleshoot independently.
A single source of truth for all
code & config changes, code
diffs, deploys, alerts - displaying
both real time & historical data.
Shift Troubleshooting Left
Uncover K8s Dependencies
Gain the relevant insights
behind a symptom, from the
app layer (code change) to the
infra layer (node resources).
Uncover related components &
understand cross-component
changes to troubleshoot with
the relevant context.
Have 360° Visibility

16. Troubleshooting probes couldn’t be easier

17. Thanks for listening!
Want to learn how you can troubleshoot K8s issues with ease?
Then check us out at: www.komodor.com