> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.hop.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Health Checks

> Enable zero-downtime, fault tolerant deployments with health checks

Health Checks can be set up per Ignite deployment to make sure that:

* Traffic is only directed to containers that pass the check, and
* New builds smoothly roll out without downtime

This is done by querying the containers periodically to make sure they're alive
and healthy. You can choose how to respond to a health check. For example, you
may only want to respond successfully to a health check once your program has
connected to its database.

## Options

### Protocol-Specific Options

| Option | Example         | Description                                                              |
| ------ | --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Path   | `/health_check` | the HTTP path that should be queried to check if your service is healthy |
| Port   | `8080`          | the port that your service is running on                                 |

### Advanced Options

| Option           | Default | Description                                                                                                                                                          |
| ---------------- | ------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Initial Delay    | 5       | How long Ignite should wait before sending the first health check                                                                                                    |
| Interval         | 60      | How long Ignite should wait (in seconds) between sending health checks                                                                                               |
| Timeout          | 10000   | The maximum time, in milliseconds, that should be tolerated for receiving a response to the health check. If exceeded, the container will be determined as unhealthy |
| Maximum Failures | 3       | How many times the health check needs to fail for a container to be determined unhealthy                                                                             |

## Creating Health Checks

Currently, Ignite only supports HTTP(s)-based health checks. When setting up a
health check, you can choose the HTTP path to be queried to make sure the
container is alive.

To respond successfully to a health check, you must respond on the path
specified when creating the health check with a `HTTP 2xx` response code, such
as `200` or `204`.

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Using the Console">
    1. Navigate to an Ignite deployment
    2. Select **Health Check** from the sidebar
    3. Click **Create Check** in the top right

    <Frame>
      <img src="https://mintcdn.com/hopio/cq2ctXa-N8Jv0svA/images/health-check.webp?fit=max&auto=format&n=cq2ctXa-N8Jv0svA&q=85&s=3924d22ed318ecc7ea3e56f8306dd5d4" alt="" width="912" height="782" data-path="images/health-check.webp" />
    </Frame>
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Using the CLI">
    ```bash theme={null}
    # Interactively
    hop ignite health new

    # Non-interactively

    hop ignite health new <deployment_id> \
     --path [path] \
     --port [port] \
     --initial-delay [seconds] \
     --interval [seconds] \
     --timeout [milliseconds] \
     --max-failures [number]
    ```
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>