Consul discovery reports registered endpoints and recorded health observations. It cannot promise that every returned endpoint will answer the caller’s next request. A useful operating model separates four things: what is registered, which checks apply, which states the query accepts, and how old those observations may be. A successful lookup establishes none of those guarantees by itself. ...
A slow start is not a dead process. Readiness and liveness make independent decisions: whether ordinary Service traffic should reach this Pod, and whether terminating this container can help it recover. Readiness failure does not suspend liveness. A startup probe provides that startup protection when configured. ...
A probe result is evidence consumed by a control loop. Kubernetes does not infer your application’s recovery strategy from a route named healthz. The probe type, result, configured thresholds, and container lifecycle determine what happens next. Treating every failure as “restart the Pod” erases distinctions that directly affect availability. ...