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layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	Check Definition	docs-agent-checks	One of the primary roles of the agent is management of system- and application-level health checks. A health check is considered to be application-level if it is associated with a service. A check is defined in a configuration file or added at runtime over the HTTP interface.

Checks

One of the primary roles of the agent is management of system-level and application-level health checks. A health check is considered to be application-level if it is associated with a service. If not associated with a service, the check monitors the health of the entire node.

A check is defined in a configuration file or added at runtime over the HTTP interface. Checks created via the HTTP interface persist with that node.

There are three different kinds of checks:

Script + Interval - These checks depend on invoking an external application that performs the health check, exits with an appropriate exit code, and potentially generates some output. A script is paired with an invocation interval (e.g. every 30 seconds). This is similar to the Nagios plugin system.
HTTP + Interval - These checks make an HTTP GET request every Interval (e.g. every 30 seconds) to the specified URL. The status of the service depends on the HTTP response code: any 2xx code is considered passing, a 429 Too Many Requests is a warning, and anything else is a failure. This type of check should be preferred over a script that uses curl or another external process to check a simple HTTP operation. By default, HTTP checks will be configured with a request timeout equal to the check interval, with a max of 10 seconds. It is possible to configure a custom HTTP check timeout value by specifying the timeout field in the check definition.
Time to Live (TTL) - These checks retain their last known state for a given TTL. The state of the check must be updated periodically over the HTTP interface. If an external system fails to update the status within a given TTL, the check is set to the failed state. This mechanism, conceptually similar to a dead man's switch, relies on the application to directly report its health. For example, a healthy app can periodically PUT a status update to the HTTP endpoint; if the app fails, the TTL will expire and the health check enters a critical state. TTL checks also persist their last known status to disk. This allows the Consul agent to restore the last known status of the check across restarts. Persisted check status is valid through the end of the TTL from the time of the last check.

Check Definition

A script check:

{
  "check": {
    "id": "mem-util",
    "name": "Memory utilization",
    "script": "/usr/local/bin/check_mem.py",
    "interval": "10s"
  }
}

A HTTP check:

{
  "check": {
    "id": "api",
    "name": "HTTP API on port 5000",
    "http": "http://localhost:5000/health",
    "interval": "10s",
    "timeout": "1s"
  }
}

A TTL check:

{
  "check": {
    "id": "web-app",
    "name": "Web App Status",
    "notes": "Web app does a curl internally every 10 seconds",
    "ttl": "30s"
  }
}

Each type of definition must include a name and may optionally provide an id and notes field. The id is set to the name if not provided. It is required that all checks have a unique ID per node: if names might conflict, unique IDs should be provided.

The notes field is opaque to Consul but can be used to provide a human-readable description of the current state of the check. With a script check, the field is set to any output generated by the script. Similarly, an external process updating a TTL check via the HTTP interface can set the notes value.

Checks may also contain a token field to provide an ACL token. This token is used for any interaction with the catalog for the check, including anti-entropy syncs and deregistration.

Both script and HTTP checks must include an interval field. This field is parsed by Go's time package, and has the following formatting specification:

A duration string is a possibly signed sequence of decimal numbers, each with optional fraction and a unit suffix, such as "300ms", "-1.5h" or "2h45m". Valid time units are "ns", "us" (or "µs"), "ms", "s", "m", "h".

To configure a check, either provide it as a -config-file option to the agent or place it inside the -config-dir of the agent. The file must end in the ".json" extension to be loaded by Consul. Check definitions can also be updated by sending a SIGHUP to the agent. Alternatively, the check can be registered dynamically using the HTTP API.

Check Scripts

A check script is generally free to do anything to determine the status of the check. The only limitations placed are that the exit codes must obey this convention:

Exit code 0 - Check is passing
Exit code 1 - Check is warning
Any other code - Check is failing

This is the only convention that Consul depends on. Any output of the script will be captured and stored in the notes field so that it can be viewed by human operators.

Initial Health Check Status

By default, when checks are registered against a Consul agent, the state is set immediately to "critical". This is useful to prevent services from being registered as "passing" and entering the service pool before they are confirmed to be healthy. In certain cases, it may be desirable to specify the initial state of a health check. This can be done by specifying the status field in a health check definition, like so:

{
  "check": {
    "id": "mem",
    "script": "/bin/check_mem",
    "interval": "10s",
    "status": "passing"
  }
}

The above service definition would cause the new "mem" check to be registered with its initial state set to "passing".

Service-bound checks

Health checks may optionally be bound to a specific service. This ensures that the status of the health check will only affect the health status of the given service instead of the entire node. Service-bound health checks may be provided by adding a service_id field to a check configuration:

{
  "check": {
    "id": "web-app",
    "name": "Web App Status",
    "service_id": "web-app",
    "ttl": "30s"
  }
}

In the above configuration, if the web-app health check begins failing, it will only affect the availability of the web-app service. All other services provided by the node will remain unchanged.

Multiple Check Definitions

Multiple check definitions can be defined using the checks (plural) key in your configuration file.

{
  "checks": [
    {
      "id": "chk1",
      "name": "mem",
      "script": "/bin/check_mem",
      "interval": "5s"
    },
    {
      "id": "chk2",
      "name": "/health",
      "http": "http://localhost:5000/health",
      "interval": "15s"
    },
    {
      "id": "chk3",
      "name": "cpu",
      "script": "/bin/check_cpu",
      "interval": "10s"
    },
    ...
  ]
}

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