This assumes you are familiar with the Python hvac client. If not, check out my article Hashicorp Vault - Getting Started with Python hvac.

This assumes the following has already been done.

• Hashicorp Vault has been installed

Here is how you can use client.sys.read_health_status to return the health status of Hashicorp Vault.

Check out my article Hashicorp Vault - Error Handling using Python hvac for details on how to include Error Handling.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import hvac

client = hvac.Client(url='http://vault.example.com:8200')

response = client.sys.read_health_status(method='GET')

for key in response:
  if key == "license":
    print(f"license {key} = {response['license'][key]}")
  else:
    print(f"{key} = {response[key]}")

Something like this should be returned.

initialized = True
sealed = False
standby = False
performance_standby = False
replication_performance_mode = disabled
replication_dr_mode = primary
server_time_utc = 1712141650
version = 1.15.2+ent
cluster_name = vault-cluster-abcdefg
cluster_id = abcd1234-xyza-5678-fd12-1234abde5432
last_wal = 7943498
'license'[state] = autoloaded
'license'[expiry_time] = 2026-06-30T00:00:00Z
'license'[terminated] = False

Be aware that if your Hashicorp Vault is in a bad way, instead of returning a dictionary, the response may return something like this.

<Response [473]>

If you were to print the response wrapped in type.

print(type(response))

Something like this should be returned, showing that the response is a class, not a dictionary.

<class 'requests.models.Response'>

If you were to print the class vars.

print(vars(response))

Something like this should be returned. Notice this included status_code, which is 473 in this example.

{
  '_content':b'{
    "initialized":true,
    "sealed":false,
    "standby":true,
    "performance_standby":true,
    "replication_performance_mode":"disabled",
    "replication_dr_mode":"primary",
    "server_time_utc":1712204521,
    "version":"1.15.2+ent",
    "cluster_name":"vault-cluster-abcdefg",
    "cluster_id":"abcd1234-xyza-5678-fd12-1234abde5432",
    "license":{
      "state":"autoloaded",
      "expiry_time":"2026-06-30T00:00:00Z",
      "terminated":false}
    }\n', 
  '_content_consumed': True, 
  '_next': None, 
  'status_code': 473, 
  'headers': {
    'Cache-Control': 'no-store', 
    'Content-Type': 'application/json', 
    'Strict-Transport-Security': 'max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains', 
    'Date': 'Thu, 04 Apr 2024 04:22:01 GMT', 
    'Content-Length': '385'}, 
  'raw': <urllib3.response.HTTPResponse object at 0x7f044c3dd4a8>, 
  'url': 'https://vault.example.com/v1/sys/health', 
  'encoding': 'utf-8', 
  'history': [], 
  'reason': 'status code 473', 
  'cookies': <RequestsCookieJar[]>, 
  'elapsed': datetime.timedelta(0, 0, 71764), 
  'request': <PreparedRequest [GET]>, 
  'connection': <requests.adapters.HTTPAdapter object at 0x7f044c85a908>
}

The status_code should be one of the following.

• 200 - vault is initialized, unsealed, and active
• 429 - vault is unsealed and standby
• 472 - vault is in disaster recovery mode replication secondary and active
• 473 - vault is in performance standby
• 501 - vault is not initialized
• 503 - vault is sealed

Here is one way you could account for this. Basically, an AttributeError should be raised if the returned the dictionary of key/value pairs.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import hvac

client = hvac.Client(url='http://vault.example.com:8200')

response = client.sys.read_health_status(method='GET')

try:
  response.status_code
except AttributeError:
  for key in keys:
    if key == "license":
      print(f"license {key} = {response['license'][key]}")
    else:
      print(f"{key} = {response[key]}")
else:
  print(response.status_code)