Estimate container cold-start time from image pull, init process and healthcheck delay.
Container startup time = imagePull + createStart + appInit + healthcheckDelay. Cold starts include the image pull; warm starts skip it. The healthcheck interval adds latency between the app being ready and the orchestrator discovering it's healthy.
Startup Time
startup = imagePull + createStart + appInit + healthcheckInterval
Pre-pull images to nodes, use smaller images (alpine/distroless), optimize application startup (lazy initialization), and reduce healthcheck intervals for faster discovery.
Even with a cached image, the orchestrator doesn't route traffic until the healthcheck passes — reducing the interval or using startup probes (in Kubernetes) helps.