# Octavia API Health Monitoring

The Octavia API provides a health monitoring endpoint that can be used by external load balancers to manage the Octavia API pool. When properly configured, the health monitoring endpoint will reflect the full operational status of the Octavia API.

The Octavia API health monitoring endpoint extends the OpenStack Oslo middleware healthcheck library to test the Octavia Pecan API framework and associated services.

## Oslo Healthcheck Queries

Oslo middleware healthcheck supports HTTP “GET” and “HEAD” methods.

The response from Oslo middleware healthcheck can be customized by specifying the acceptable response type for the request.

Oslo middleware healthcheck currently supports the following types:

- text/plain

- text/html

- application/json

If the requested type is not one of the above, it defaults to text/plain.

Note

The content of the response “reasons” will vary based on the backend plugins enabled in Oslo middleware healthcheck. It is a best practice to only rely on the HTTP status code for Octavia API health monitoring.

### Example Responses

Example passing output for text/plain with detailed False:

    $ curl -i http://198.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:10:27 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
      Content-Length: 2
      x-openstack-request-id: req-9c6f4303-63a7-4f30-8afc-39340658702f
      Connection: close
      Vary: Accept-Encoding

      OK

Example failing output for text/plain with detailed False:

    $ curl -i http://198.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:42:12 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
      Content-Length: 36
      x-openstack-request-id: req-84024269-2dfb-41ad-bfda-b3e1da138bba
      Connection: close

Example passing output for text/html with detailed False:

    $ curl -i -H "Accept: text/html" http://198.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:25:11 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
      Content-Length: 239
      x-openstack-request-id: req-b212d619-146f-4b50-91a3-5da16051badc
      Connection: close
      Vary: Accept-Encoding

      <HTML>
      <HEAD><TITLE>Healthcheck Status</TITLE></HEAD>
      <BODY>

      <H2>Result of 1 checks:</H2>
      <TABLE bgcolor="#ffffff" border="1">
      <TBODY>
      <TR>

      <TH>
      Reason
      </TH>
      </TR>
      <TR>

          <TD>OK</TD>

      </TR>
      </TBODY>
      </TABLE>
      <HR></HR>

      </BODY>
      </HTML>

Example failing output for text/html with detailed False:

    $ curl -i -H "Accept: text/html" http://198.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:42:22 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
      Content-Length: 273
      x-openstack-request-id: req-c91dd214-85ca-4d33-9fa3-2db81566d9e5
      Connection: close

      <HTML>
      <HEAD><TITLE>Healthcheck Status</TITLE></HEAD>
      <BODY>

      <H2>Result of 1 checks:</H2>
      <TABLE bgcolor="#ffffff" border="1">
      <TBODY>
      <TR>

      <TH>
      Reason
      </TH>
      </TR>
      <TR>

          <TD>The Octavia database is unavailable.</TD>

      </TR>
      </TBODY>
      </TABLE>
      <HR></HR>

      </BODY>
      </HTML>

Example passing output for application/json with detailed False:

    $ curl -i -H "Accept: application/json" http://192.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:34:42 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: application/json
      Content-Length: 62
      x-openstack-request-id: req-417dc85c-e64e-496e-a461-494a3e6a5479
      Connection: close

      {
          "detailed": false,
          "reasons": [
              "OK"
          ]
      }

Example failing output for application/json with detailed False:

    $ curl -i -H "Accept: application/json" http://192.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:46:28 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: application/json
      Content-Length: 96
      x-openstack-request-id: req-de50b057-6105-4fca-a758-c872ef28bbfa
      Connection: close

      {
          "detailed": false,
          "reasons": [
              "The Octavia database is unavailable."
          ]
      }

### Example Detailed Responses

Example passing output for text/plain with detailed True:

    $ curl -i http://198.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:10:27 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
      Content-Length: 2
      x-openstack-request-id: req-9c6f4303-63a7-4f30-8afc-39340658702f
      Connection: close
      Vary: Accept-Encoding

      OK

Example failing output for text/plain with detailed True:

    $ curl -i http://198.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 23:41:23 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
      Content-Length: 36
      x-openstack-request-id: req-2cd046cb-3a6c-45e3-921d-5f4a9e65c63e
      Connection: close

Example passing output for text/html with detailed True:

    $ curl -i -H "Accept: text/html" http://198.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 22:11:54 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
      Content-Length: 9927
      x-openstack-request-id: req-ae7404c9-b183-46dc-bb1b-e5f4e4984a57
      Connection: close
      Vary: Accept-Encoding

      <HTML>
      <HEAD><TITLE>Healthcheck Status</TITLE></HEAD>
      <BODY>
      <H1>Server status</H1>
      <B>Server hostname:</B><PRE>devstack2</PRE>
      <B>Current time:</B><PRE>2020-03-16 22:11:54.320529</PRE>
      <B>Python version:</B><PRE>3.6.9 (default, Nov  7 2019, 10:44:02)
      [GCC 8.3.0]</PRE>
      <B>Platform:</B><PRE>Linux-4.15.0-88-generic-x86_64-with-Ubuntu-18.04-bionic</PRE>
      <HR></HR>
      <H2>Garbage collector:</H2>
      <B>Counts:</B><PRE>(28, 10, 4)</PRE>
      <B>Thresholds:</B><PRE>(700, 10, 10)</PRE>
      <HR></HR>
      <H2>Result of 1 checks:</H2>
      <TABLE bgcolor="#ffffff" border="1">
      <TBODY>
      <TR>
      <TH>
      Kind
      </TH>
      <TH>
      Reason
      </TH>
      <TH>
      Details
      </TH>

      </TR>
      <TR>
      <TD>OctaviaDBCheckResult</TD>
          <TD>OK</TD>
      <TD></TD>
      </TR>
      </TBODY>
      </TABLE>
      <HR></HR>
      <H2>1 greenthread(s) active:</H2>
      <TABLE bgcolor="#ffffff" border="1">
      <TBODY>
      <TR>
          <TD><PRE> <...> </PRE></TD>
      </TR>
      </TBODY>
      </TABLE>
      <HR></HR>
      <H2>1 thread(s) active:</H2>
      <TABLE bgcolor="#ffffff" border="1">
      <TBODY>
      <TR>
          <TD><PRE> <...> </PRE></TD>
      </TR>
      </TBODY>
      </TABLE>
      </BODY>
      </HTML>

Example failing output for text/html with detailed True:

    $ curl -i -H "Accept: text/html" http://198.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 23:43:52 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
      Content-Length: 10211
      x-openstack-request-id: req-39b65058-6dc3-4069-a2d5-8a9714dba61d
      Connection: close

      <HTML>
      <HEAD><TITLE>Healthcheck Status</TITLE></HEAD>
      <BODY>
      <H1>Server status</H1>
      <B>Server hostname:</B><PRE>devstack2</PRE>
      <B>Current time:</B><PRE>2020-03-16 23:43:52.411127</PRE>
      <B>Python version:</B><PRE>3.6.9 (default, Nov  7 2019, 10:44:02)
      [GCC 8.3.0]</PRE>
      <B>Platform:</B><PRE>Linux-4.15.0-88-generic-x86_64-with-Ubuntu-18.04-bionic</PRE>
      <HR></HR>
      <H2>Garbage collector:</H2>
      <B>Counts:</B><PRE>(578, 10, 4)</PRE>
      <B>Thresholds:</B><PRE>(700, 10, 10)</PRE>
      <HR></HR>
      <H2>Result of 1 checks:</H2>
      <TABLE bgcolor="#ffffff" border="1">
      <TBODY>
      <TR>
      <TH>
      Kind
      </TH>
      <TH>
      Reason
      </TH>
      <TH>
      Details
      </TH>

      </TR>
      <TR>
      <TD>OctaviaDBCheckResult</TD>
          <TD>The Octavia database is unavailable.</TD>
      <TD>Database health check failed due to: (pymysql.err.OperationalError) (2003, &#34;Can&#39;t connect to MySQL server on &#39;127.0.0.1&#39; ([Errno 111] Connection refused)&#34;)
      [SQL: SELECT 1]
      (Background on this error at: http://sqlalche.me/e/e3q8).</TD>
      </TR>
      </TBODY>
      </TABLE>
      <HR></HR>
      <H2>1 greenthread(s) active:</H2>
      <TABLE bgcolor="#ffffff" border="1">
      <TBODY>
      <TR>
          <TD><PRE> <...> </PRE></TD>
      </TR>
      </TBODY>
      </TABLE>
      <HR></HR>
      <H2>1 thread(s) active:</H2>
      <TABLE bgcolor="#ffffff" border="1">
      <TBODY>
      <TR>
          <TD><PRE> <...> </PRE></TD>
      </TR>
      </TBODY>
      </TABLE>
      </BODY>
      </HTML>

Example passing output for application/json with detailed True:

    $ curl -i -H "Accept: application/json" http://192.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 22:05:26 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: application/json
      Content-Length: 9298
      x-openstack-request-id: req-d3913655-6e3f-4086-a252-8bb297ea5fd6
      Connection: close

      {
          "detailed": true,
          "gc": {
              "counts": [
                  27,
                  10,
                  4
              ],
              "threshold": [
                  700,
                  10,
                  10
              ]
          },
          "greenthreads": [
              <...>
          ],
          "now": "2020-03-16 22:05:26.431429",
          "platform": "Linux-4.15.0-88-generic-x86_64-with-Ubuntu-18.04-bionic",
          "python_version": "3.6.9 (default, Nov  7 2019, 10:44:02) \n[GCC 8.3.0]",
          "reasons": [
              {
                  "class": "OctaviaDBCheckResult",
                  "details": "",
                  "reason": "OK"
              }
          ],
          "threads": [
              <...>
          ]
      }

Example failing output for application/json with detailed True:

    $ curl -i -H "Accept: application/json" http://192.51.100.10/load-balancer/healthcheck

      HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
      Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 23:56:43 GMT
      Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
      Content-Type: application/json
      Content-Length: 9510
      x-openstack-request-id: req-3d62ea04-9bdb-4e19-b218-1a81ff7d7337
      Connection: close

      {
          "detailed": true,
          "gc": {
              "counts": [
                  178,
                  0,
                  5
              ],
              "threshold": [
                  700,
                  10,
                  10
              ]
          },
          "greenthreads": [
              <...>
          ],
          "now": "2020-03-16 23:58:23.361209",
          "platform": "Linux-4.15.0-88-generic-x86_64-with-Ubuntu-18.04-bionic",
          "python_version": "3.6.9 (default, Nov  7 2019, 10:44:02) \n[GCC 8.3.0]",
          "reasons": [
              {
                  "class": "OctaviaDBCheckResult",
                  "details": "(pymysql.err.OperationalError) (2003, \"Can't connect to MySQL server on '127.0.0.1' ([Errno 111] Connection refused)\")\n(Background on this error at: http://sqlalche.me/e/e3q8)",
                  "reason": "The Octavia database is unavailable."
              }
          ],
          "threads": [
              <...>
          ]
      }

## Oslo Healthcheck Plugins

The Octavia API health monitoring endpoint, implemented with Oslo middleware healthcheck, is extensible using optional backend plugins. There are currently plugins provided by the Oslo middleware library and plugins provided by Octavia.

Oslo middleware provided plugins

- disable_by_file

- disable_by_files_ports

Octavia provided plugins

- octavia_db_check

Warning

Some plugins may have long timeouts. It is a best practice to configure your healthcheck query to have connection, read, and/or data timeouts. The appropriate values will be unique to each deployment depending on the cloud performance, number of plugins, etc.

## Enabling Octavia API Health Monitoring

To enable the Octavia API health monitoring endpoint, the proper configuration file settings need to be updated and the Octavia API processes need to be restarted.

Start by enabling the endpoint:

    [api_settings]
    healthcheck_enabled = True

When the healthcheck_enabled setting is False, queries of the /healthcheck will receive an HTTP 404 Not Found response.

You will then need to select the desired monitoring backend plugins:

    [healthcheck]
    backends = octavia_db_check

Note

When no plugins are configured, the behavior of Oslo middleware healthcheck changes. Not only does it not run any tests, it will return 204 results instead of 200.

The Octavia API health monitoring endpoint does not require a keystone token for access to allow external load balancers to query the endpoint. For this reason we recommend you restrict access to it on your external load balancer to prevent abuse.

As an additional protection, the API will cache results for a configurable period of time. This means that queries to the health monitoring endpoint will return cached results until the refresh interval has expired, at which point the health check plugin will rerun the check.

By default, the refresh interval is five seconds. This can be configured by adjusting the healthcheck_refresh_interval setting in the Octavia configuration file:

    [api_settings]
    healthcheck_refresh_interval = 5

Optionally you can enable the “detailed” mode in Oslo middleware healthcheck. This will cause Oslo middleware healthcheck to return additional information about the API instance. It will also provide exception details if one was raised during the health check. This setting is False and disabled by default in the Octavia API.

    [healthcheck]
    detailed = True

Warning

Enabling the ‘detailed’ setting will expose sensitive details about the API process. Do not enabled this unless you are sure it will not pose a security risk to your API instances. We highly recommend you do not enable this.

## Using Octavia API Health Monitoring

The Octavia API health monitoring endpoint can be accessed via the /healthmonitor path on the Octavia API endpoint.

For example, if your Octavia (load-balancer) endpoint in keystone is:

    https://10.21.21.78/load-balancer

You would access the Octavia API health monitoring endpoint via:

    https://10.21.21.78/load-balancer/healthcheck

A keystone token is not required to access this endpoint.

## Octavia Plugins

### octavia_db_check

The octavia_db_check plugin validates the API instance has a working connection to the Octavia database. It executes a SQL no-op query, ‘SELECT 1;’, against the database.

Note

Many OpenStack services and libraries, such as oslo.db and sqlalchemy, also use the no-op query, ‘SELECT 1;’ for health checks.

The possible octavia_db_check results are:

Request | Result | Status Code | “reason” Message
--- | --- | --- | ---
GET | Pass | 200 | OK
HEAD | Pass | 204 |
GET | Fail | 503 | The Octavia database is unavailable.
HEAD | Fail | 503 |

When running Oslo middleware healthcheck in “detailed” mode, the “details” field will have additional information about the error encountered, including the exception details if they were available.

this page last updated: 2026-03-10 21:33:29

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