One trick we use for our applications is have an url endpoint that checks for db connection, filesystem, etc and formats it in a human readable and machine chec

One trick we use for our applications is have an url endpoint that checks for db connection, filesystem, etc and formats it in a human readable and machine checkable format (ie. "Load is OK at .4 .4 .4"). Then you can use a similar "request contains" check to make sure everything is up.