istio.io/content/en/docs/ops/configuration/mesh/app-health-check/index.md

title	description	weight	aliases	keywords	owner	test
Health Checking of Istio Services	Shows how to do health checking for Istio services.	50	/docs/tasks/traffic-management/app-health-check/ /docs/ops/security/health-checks-and-mtls/ /help/ops/setup/app-health-check /help/ops/app-health-check /docs/ops/app-health-check /docs/ops/setup/app-health-check	security health-check	istio/wg-user-experience-maintainers	yes

Kubernetes liveness and readiness probes describes several ways to configure liveness and readiness probes:

1. Command
2. HTTP request
3. TCP probe
4. gRPC probe

The command approach works with no changes required, but HTTP requests, TCP probes, and gRPC probes require Istio to make changes to the pod configuration.

The health check requests to the liveness-http service are sent by Kubelet. This becomes a problem when mutual TLS is enabled, because the Kubelet does not have an Istio issued certificate. Therefore the health check requests will fail.

TCP probe checks need special handling, because Istio redirects all incoming traffic into the sidecar, and so all TCP ports appear open. The Kubelet simply checks if some process is listening on the specified port, and so the probe will always succeed as long as the sidecar is running.

Istio solves both these problems by rewriting the application PodSpec readiness/liveness probe, so that the probe request is sent to the sidecar agent. For HTTP and gRPC requests, the sidecar agent redirects the request to the application and strips the response body, only returning the response code. For TCP probes, the sidecar agent will then do the port check while avoiding the traffic redirection.

The rewriting of problematic probes is enabled by default in all built-in Istio configuration profiles but can be disabled as described below.

Liveness and readiness probes using the command approach

Istio provides a [liveness sample]({{< github_file >}}/samples/health-check/liveness-command.yaml) that implements this approach. To demonstrate it working with mutual TLS enabled, first create a namespace for the example:

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl create ns istio-io-health {{< /text >}}

To configure strict mutual TLS, run:

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1 kind: PeerAuthentication metadata: name: "default" namespace: "istio-io-health" spec: mtls: mode: STRICT EOF {{< /text >}}

Next, change directory to the root of the Istio installation and run the following command to deploy the sample service:

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl -n istio-io-health apply -f <(istioctl kube-inject -f @samples/health-check/liveness-command.yaml@) {{< /text >}}

To confirm that the liveness probes are working, check the status of the sample pod to verify that it is running.

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl -n istio-io-health get pod NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE liveness-6857c8775f-zdv9r 2/2 Running 0 4m {{< /text >}}

Liveness and readiness probes using the HTTP, TCP, and gRPC approach

As stated previously, Istio uses probe rewrite to implement HTTP, TCP, and gRPC probes by default. You can disable this feature either for specific pods, or globally.

Disable the probe rewrite for a pod

You can annotate the pod with sidecar.istio.io/rewriteAppHTTPProbers: "false" to disable the probe rewrite option. Make sure you add the annotation to the pod resource because it will be ignored anywhere else (for example, on an enclosing deployment resource).

{{< tabset category-name="disable-probe-rewrite" >}}

{{< tab name="HTTP Probe" category-value="http-probe" >}}

{{< text yaml >}} kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: liveness-http spec: selector: matchLabels: app: liveness-http version: v1 template: metadata: labels: app: liveness-http version: v1 annotations: sidecar.istio.io/rewriteAppHTTPProbers: "false" spec: containers: - name: liveness-http image: docker.io/istio/health:example ports: - containerPort: 8001 livenessProbe: httpGet: path: /foo port: 8001 initialDelaySeconds: 5 periodSeconds: 5 EOF {{< /text >}}

{{< /tab >}}

{{< tab name="gRPC Probe" category-value="grpc-probe" >}}

{{< text yaml >}} kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: liveness-grpc spec: selector: matchLabels: app: liveness-grpc version: v1 template: metadata: labels: app: liveness-grpc version: v1 annotations: sidecar.istio.io/rewriteAppHTTPProbers: "false" spec: containers: - name: etcd image: registry.k8s.io/etcd:3.5.1-0 command: ["--listen-client-urls", "http://0.0.0.0:2379", "--advertise-client-urls", "http://127.0.0.1:2379", "--log-level", "debug"] ports: - containerPort: 2379 livenessProbe: grpc: port: 2379 initialDelaySeconds: 10 periodSeconds: 5 EOF {{< /text >}}

{{< /tab >}}

{{< /tabset >}}

This approach allows you to disable the health check probe rewrite gradually on individual deployments, without reinstalling Istio.

Disable the probe rewrite globally

Install Istio using --set values.sidecarInjectorWebhook.rewriteAppHTTPProbe=false to disable the probe rewrite globally. Alternatively, update the configuration map for the Istio sidecar injector:

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl get cm istio-sidecar-injector -n istio-system -o yaml | sed -e 's/"rewriteAppHTTPProbe": true/"rewriteAppHTTPProbe": false/' | kubectl apply -f - {{< /text >}}

Cleanup

Remove the namespace used for the examples:

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl delete ns istio-io-health {{< /text >}}