How many heartbeats must be missed for the VEN to enter a degraded state?

In Illumio Core, the concept of heartbeats is essential for maintaining communication between the Virtual Enforcement Node (VEN) and the Illumio policy engine. The VEN monitors the health of its connection to ensure it is operational and to receive updates or policies from the policy engine.

To maintain a stable and responsive environment, the VEN is designed to enter a degraded state if it does not receive a heartbeat for a specific threshold. This threshold is set at missing three consecutive heartbeats. By entering a degraded state after three heartbeats are missed, the VEN can signal potential connectivity or operational issues without giving too little or too much time to respond to transient hiccups in communication.

This approach helps to ensure that the system can adapt and react appropriately while balancing responsiveness and system security. If too few heartbeats were used, it could lead to premature degradation; conversely, setting a higher threshold could delay responses to actual problems. Thus, the choice of three missed heartbeats for entering a degraded state is a thoughtfully designed aspect of Illumio's operational logic, emphasizing both resilience and timely action.