# Linkerd pods failing readiness/liveness probes intermittently in GKE cluster

**URL:** <https://linkerd.buoyant.io/t/linkerd-pods-failing-readiness-liveness-probes-intermittently-in-gke-cluster/807>\
**Category:** Linkerd General Discussion\
**Tags:** proxy, configuration\
**Created:** [September 4, 2025, 11:47am UTC](https://linkerd.buoyant.io/t/linkerd-pods-failing-readiness-liveness-probes-intermittently-in-gke-cluster/807 "2025-09-04T11:47:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Akshay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3ab097/32.png) [@Akshay](https://linkerd.buoyant.io/u/Akshay)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2025, 11:47am UTC](https://linkerd.buoyant.io/t/linkerd-pods-failing-readiness-liveness-probes-intermittently-in-gke-cluster/807/1 "2025-09-04T11:47:39Z")

</div>

We are observing intermittent readiness and liveness probe failures for Linkerd pods (specially Linkerd-destination pod)of the **gke** cluster. These failures result in pod restarts due to liveness probe timeouts.The Kubernetes version on which it is running is 1.31.  
Error message:

```auto
Events:
  Type Reason Age From Message
  ---- ------ ---- ---- -------
  Warning Unhealthy 41m (x41421 over 103d) kubelet Liveness probe failed: Get "http://10.99.78.5:9996/ping": context deadline exceeded (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)
  Warning Unhealthy 31m (x42777 over 103d) kubelet Readiness probe failed: Get "http://10.99.78.5:9996/ready": context deadline exceeded (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)
  Warning Unhealthy 26m (x11367 over 103d) kubelet (combined from similar events): Readiness probe failed: Get "http://10.99.78.5:9997/ready": context deadline exceeded (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)
  Warning Unhealthy 21m (x41678 over 103d) kubelet Readiness probe failed: Get "http://10.99.78.5:9990/ready": context deadline exceeded (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)
  Warning Unhealthy 11m (x41286 over 103d) kubelet Liveness probe failed: Get "http://10.99.78.5:9997/ping": context deadline exceeded (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)
  Warning Unhealthy 6m44s (x41542 over 103d) kubelet Liveness probe failed: Get "http://10.99.78.5:9990/live": context deadline exceeded (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)
  Warning Unhealthy 64s (x40672 over 103d) kubelet Readiness probe failed: Get "http://10.99.78.5:9997/ready": context deadline exceeded (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)

```

I’d like to get to the bottom of this to understand what could be causing this issue.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Akshay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3ab097/32.png) [@Akshay](https://linkerd.buoyant.io/u/Akshay)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2025, 12:07pm UTC](https://linkerd.buoyant.io/t/linkerd-pods-failing-readiness-liveness-probes-intermittently-in-gke-cluster/807/2 "2025-09-04T12:07:21Z")

</div>

![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/buoyant1/original/1X/1586ce0b5013cc23e6eec5423c956ba21f4079df.jpeg)