Health Checks - A Boon or a Curse

Explore the benefits and challenges of health checks in distributed systems through this conference talk by Venil Noronha and John Murray from Stripe. Delve into the essential role of health checks in operating reliable services and their implementation in Envoy. Discover the scalability issues faced by Stripe, including the N-square problem, and learn about potential solutions to mitigate these challenges. Gain insights into slow time detection, common issues, and effective mitigation strategies for large-scale latency-sensitive systems. Conclude with valuable lessons on optimizing health check implementations for improved system reliability and performance.

Introduction
Conceptual Overview
Envoy Options
Stripe Health Checks
Problems
Slow Time Detection
Issues
Mitigations
Solutions
Conclusions