Why `livez` and `readyz` Matter for Kubernetes Health Probes

When a service handles a high volume of requests, health probes are not just a small deployment detail anymore. They become part of the reliability strategy. In Kubernetes, liveness and readiness probes help the platform decide two different things: Is this container still alive and capable of making forward progress? Is this pod ready to receive production traffic right now? This distinction matters. Even one minute of unavailability in a busy service can mean thousands of dropped requests. In