Consul Health Checks

By default when registering with Consul Micronaut will register a TTL check. A TTL check basically means that if the application does not send a heartbeat back to Consul after a period of time the service is put in a failing state.

Micronaut applications feature a HeartbeatConfiguration which starts a thread using HeartbeatTask that fires HeartbeatEvent instances.

The ConsulAutoRegistration class listens for these events and sends a callback to the /agent/check/pass/:check_id endpoint provided by Consul, effectively keeping the service alive.

With this arrangement the responsibility is on the Micronaut application to send TTL callbacks to Consul on a regular basis.

If you prefer you can push the responsibility for health checks to Consul itself by registering an HTTP check:

Consul HTTP Check Configuration

consul:
  client:
    registration:
       check:
          http: true

With this configuration option in place Consul will assume responsibility of invoking the Micronaut applications Health Endpoint.