Ping Definition

Configuration

# Ping definition
[ping]
  # Name of the related entry point
  #
  # Optional
  # Default: "traefik"
  #
  entryPoint = "traefik"

Warning

Even if you have authentication configured on entry point, the /ping path of the api is excluded from authentication.

Examples

The /ping health-check URL is enabled with the command-line --ping or config file option [ping]. Thus, if you have a regular path for /foo and an entrypoint on :80, you would access them as follows:

• Regular path: http://hostname:80/foo
• Admin panel: http://hostname:8080/
• Ping URL: http://hostname:8080/ping

However, for security reasons, you may want to be able to expose the /ping health-check URL to outside health-checkers, e.g. an Internet service or cloud load-balancer, without exposing your dashboard's port. In many environments, the security staff may not allow you to expose it.

You have two options:

• Enable /ping on a regular entry point
• Enable /ping on a dedicated port

Ping health check on a regular entry point

To proxy /ping from a regular entry point to the administration one without exposing the dashboard, do the following:

defaultEntryPoints = ["http"]
[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.http]
  address = ":80"
[ping]
entryPoint = "http"

The above link ping on the http entry point and then expose it on port 80

Enable ping health check on dedicated port

If you do not want to or cannot expose the health-check on a regular entry point - e.g. your security rules do not allow it, or you have a conflicting path - then you can enable health-check on its own entry point. Use the following configuration:

defaultEntryPoints = ["http"]
[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.http]
  address = ":80"
  [entryPoints.ping]
  address = ":8082"
[ping]
entryPoint = "ping"

The above is similar to the previous example, but instead of enabling /ping on the default entry point, we enable it on a dedicated entry point.

In the above example, you would access a regular path and health-check as follows:

• Regular path: http://hostname:80/foo
• Ping URL: http://hostname:8082/ping

Note the dedicated port :8082 for /ping.

In the above example, it is very important to create a named dedicated entry point, and do not include it in defaultEntryPoints. Otherwise, you are likely to expose all services via this entry point.

Using ping for external Load-balancer rotation health check

If you are running traefik behind a external Load-balancer, and want to configure rotation health check on the Load-balancer to take a traefik instance out of rotation gracefully, you can configure lifecycle.requestAcceptGraceTimeout and the ping endpoint will return 503 response on traefik server termination, so that the Load-balancer can take the terminating traefik instance out of rotation, before it stops responding.