Smoke and health probe

A smoke and health probe starts the built artifact, or reaches the deployed release, and checks that it answers and that its main paths work. Loops read it because it checks what ships, not the source tree.

What it sees

Whether the thing that will run actually runs: the packed package installs and starts, the container comes up, the release answers on its health endpoints after a rollout, a backup restores, a rollback works. It makes few checks and makes them every time. It sees that the main paths work, not that every feature does.

Reading the signal

• Healthy: every probe answered with a healthy status, and every smoke step passed.
• No answer: a probe got no answer in time. The artifact did not start, or the release cannot be reached.
• Unhealthy or failed: an unhealthy status, or the first smoke step that failed.

A probe that reached the previous version, or the wrong address, passes or fails without observing the release. Check which version answered before reading the result.