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A green readiness probe means the configured check passed—not that every user request will succeed or that every traffic path has caught up. During a rolling update, probe results, Deployment availability, Service endpoints, and connection draining each describe different parts of the change. Understanding those distinctions explains why a Pod can appear ready while users still see errors.

What a readiness probe actually tells you

Kubernetes describes readiness probes as the kubelet’s way to know when a container is ready to start accepting traffic. The key qualification is that Kubernetes evaluates the probe you configured; it does not independently validate every application route, dependency, ingress path, or load balancer. Calling a probe “lying” is a useful metaphor for that gap in expectations, not evidence of a Kubernetes bug.

When a readiness probe fails, the Pod’s Ready condition becomes false. The EndpointSlice controller removes the Pod IP from EndpointSlices for matching Services, so compatible traffic consumers can stop selecting it. A successful probe, conversely, says only that its configured HTTP, TCP, gRPC, or exec check succeeded.

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Readiness is not liveness

A failed readiness check does not restart the container. The kubelet keeps the container running and continues probing it. Startup or liveness probe failures can trigger a restart after the configured failure threshold. Readiness answers whether a container should receive traffic; liveness answers whether it should be restarted.

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A passing check can miss a broken request path

A TCP probe may establish that a port accepts connections, or an HTTP health path may return success, while a user-facing route, cache, or required dependency is failing. That is a probe-design mismatch: the check is narrower than the behavior users expect. It is not proof that a particular failure is common or that Kubernetes is routing incorrectly.

Why a rollout can send traffic before a Pod counts as available

A Deployment’s minReadySeconds setting controls rollout availability accounting: a newly created Pod counts as available only after it has stayed Ready for the configured interval. It is not a traffic warm-up timer. Service traffic eligibility follows readiness and endpoint conditions, so traffic can reach a new Pod before it has satisfied the Deployment’s minReadySeconds interval.

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Rollout behavior also depends on maxUnavailable and maxSurge. These settings constrain how the Deployment scales old and new ReplicaSets as it progresses. Terminating Pods can temporarily keep resource usage above the nominal replica-plus-surge count until their termination grace periods expire. Check rollout status and available replicas alongside endpoint state rather than treating any one of those indicators as the whole picture.

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What happens to endpoints when a Pod terminates

Deletion changes endpoint conditions independently of the probe’s result. For ordinary traffic, an EndpointSlice marks a terminating Pod’s ready condition false. The serving condition can indicate whether a terminating endpoint is still serving, while terminating indicates that termination is underway. Whether and how a networking component uses these conditions depends on the cluster’s networking stack; ingress controllers and cloud load balancers do not necessarily behave identically.

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Graceful shutdown therefore involves more than a green probe turning red. The application’s shutdown behavior, Pod termination grace period, and endpoint consumer all affect whether existing connections drain cleanly and whether new traffic stops at the right time. Inspect the endpoint conditions and the behavior of the actual traffic path rather than assuming every component handles draining the same way.

Diagnose a rollout when the probe and user experience disagree

  1. Inspect what the handler exercises. An HTTP probe requests its configured path and port; a TCP probe attempts a connection from the node; an exec probe runs a command inside the container. A passing result is meaningful only in relation to the behavior that check covers. Kubernetes recommends a dedicated HTTP health endpoint that returns a minimal response rather than relying on a large-payload endpoint. For TCP probes, connections originate at the node, so the probe’s host field cannot use a Service name that needs cluster DNS resolution.
  2. Separate startup from steady-state health. If initialization is slow, consider a startup probe. Kubernetes delays liveness and readiness probes until the startup probe succeeds, preventing steady-state checks from evaluating the application too early during startup.
  3. Review probe timing as a group. Kubernetes’ current documentation lists defaults of 10 seconds for periodSeconds, 1 second for timeoutSeconds, 3 failures for failureThreshold, and 1 success for successThreshold; the minimum values are generally 1. Readiness checks may run more frequently than periodSeconds while a container is not Ready. These defaults do not establish a universal endpoint-propagation or traffic-cutover time.
  4. Compare the control-plane signals. Inspect Pod conditions and container states, then check the matching Service’s EndpointSlices and their ready, serving, and terminating conditions. Compare those results with Deployment rollout status and available replicas.
  5. Test the user path when users fail but readiness passes. Exercise the application route and relevant dependencies separately. A readiness check should cover a meaningful, bounded condition; adding every dependency to liveness can cause cascading failures under load, a risk Kubernetes warns about in its probe guidance.

Choose a probe that matches the decision it controls

Approach What it establishes Trade-off
Lightweight process or port check The process responds or the port accepts a connection. Simple and bounded, but it may not demonstrate that the application can handle user requests.
Bounded application-readiness check A dedicated application endpoint reports whether the service can perform the work needed to receive traffic. Closer to user-serving readiness, but the endpoint must be designed carefully so it is representative without becoming slow, broad, or dependent on every downstream system.

There is no universal probe configuration for every service. Evaluate what the check exercises, whether it is a startup, readiness, or liveness probe, its timeout and consecutive-failure or success thresholds, how long readiness must persist for Deployment availability, rollout surge and unavailability constraints, and endpoint behavior during termination.

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Match guidance to your Kubernetes version

The probe and Deployment documentation is rolling documentation, while the cited EndpointSlice references include Kubernetes v1.32 and v1.35. Check the documentation and behavior for the version running in your cluster. Endpoint condition handling also depends on the networking components consuming those conditions, so do not assume a particular ingress or cloud load balancer applies them identically.

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