How To Use Health Checks In .NET Core | HOW TO - Code Samples
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We all strive to build highly efficient applications that scale gracefully under load. As our systems’ complexity grows with distributed microservices architectures, it becomes increasingly critical to keep an eye on our application’s health.
That’s where the magic of Health Checks comes into play.
Understanding Health Checks
Health Checks are an essential tool in our developer kit that helps us monitor and verify the operational status of our .NET applications. They act as the heartbeat of our applications, providing insights about various components, including:
Databases
APIs
Caches
hird-party services
etc.
The Need for Health Checks
Consider a distributed system with numerous services working in harmony. When a single component misbehaves, it could trigger a domino effect, causing system-wide issues.
Implementing health checks helps prevent such mishaps by giving you timely updates about malfunctioning components.
Moreover, health checks are crucial when deploying microservices or orchestrating containers, as they help manage traffic flow based on the health status of instances.
Key Takeaways
1. Start Early with Health Checks
2. Use Built-In Checks
3. Custom Checks are Powerful: Custom health checks give you the power to monitor specific aspects of your application. Use them when the built-in checks aren’t enough, but always remember to keep them fast and lightweight.
4. Leverage Libraries: Before you start creating custom health checks, explore existing libraries. Libraries like AspNetCore.Diagnostics.HealthChecks provide ready-to-use health checks for many popular services.
5. Monitor Regularly
6. Analyze and Act: Don’t just collect health check data, analyze it. Use this data to improve your application’s reliability and user experience.
7. Communicate with Your Team
Remember, health checks are a vital tool for proactive application maintenance. Use them wisely to ensure your applications are always running at their best.
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