Getting started with Cloud Endpoints for Managed Instance Group (MIGs) with ESPv2

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OpenAPI   |  gRPC

This tutorial shows you how to configure and deploy a sample API and the Extensible Service Proxy V2 (ESPv2) running in prebuilt Docker containers on Managed Instance Group (MIGs) .

The sample code's REST API is described using the OpenAPI specification. The tutorial also shows you how to create an API key and use it in requests to the API.

For an overview of Cloud Endpoints, see About Endpoints and Endpoints architecture.

Objectives

Use the following high-level task list as you work through the tutorial. All tasks are required to successfully send requests to the API.

1. Set up a Google Cloud project. See Before you begin.
2. Download the sample code. See Getting the sample code.
3. Configure the openapi.yaml file, which is used to configure Endpoints. See Configuring Endpoints.
4. Deploy the Endpoints configuration to create a Endpoints service. See Deploying the Endpoints configuration.
5. Deploy the API and ESPv2 on the Managed Instance Group (MIGs) backend. See Deploying the API backend.
6. Send a request to the API by using an IP address. See Sending a request by using IP address.
7. Configure a DNS record for the sample API. See Configuring DNS for Endpoints.
8. Send a request to the API by using the fully qualified domain name. See Sending a request by using FQDN.
9. Track API activity. See Tracking API activity.
10. Avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account. See Clean up.

Costs

In this document, you use the following billable components of Google Cloud:

• Compute Engine
• Endpoints

To generate a cost estimate based on your projected usage, use the pricing calculator. New Google Cloud users might be eligible for a free trial.

When you finish the tasks that are described in this document, you can avoid continued billing by deleting the resources that you created. For more information, see Clean up.

Before you begin

1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   Go to project selector

3. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

4. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   Go to project selector

5. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

6. Make a note of the project ID because it's needed later.

7. You need an application to send requests to the sample API.

   • Linux and macOS users: This tutorial provides an example of using curl, which typically comes pre-installed on your operating system. If you don't have curl, you can download it from the curl Releases and downloads page.
   • Windows users: This tutorial provides an example using Invoke-WebRequest, which is supported in PowerShell 3.0 and later.
8. Download the Google Cloud CLI.
9. Update the gcloud CLI and install the Endpoints components.

   gcloud components update

10. Make sure that the Google Cloud CLI (gcloud) is authorized to access your data and services on Google Cloud:

    gcloud auth login

    In the new browser tab that opens, select an account.
11. Set the default project to your project ID.

    gcloud config set project YOUR_PROJECT_ID

    Replace YOUR_PROJECT_ID with your project ID. If you have other Google Cloud projects, and you want to use gcloud to manage them, see Managing gcloud CLI configurations.

When you finish the tasks that are described in this document, you can avoid continued billing by deleting the resources that you created. For more information, see Clean up.

Downloading the sample code

Download the sample code to your local machine.

Java

To clone or download the sample API:

1. Clone the sample app repository to your local machine:

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/java-docs-samples

   Alternatively, download the sample as a zip file and extract it.

2. Change to the directory that contains the sample code:

   cd java-docs-samples/endpoints/getting-started

Python

To clone or download the sample API:

1. Clone the sample app repository to your local machine:

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/python-docs-samples

   Alternatively, download the sample as a zip file and extract it.

2. Change to the directory that contains the sample code:

   cd python-docs-samples/endpoints/getting-started

Go

To clone or download the sample API:

1. Make sure your GOPATH environment variable is set.
2. Clone the sample app repository to your local machine:

   go get -d github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/golang-samples/endpoints/getting-started

3. Change to the directory that contains the sample code:

   cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/golang-samples/endpoints/getting-started

PHP

To clone or download the sample API:

1. Clone the sample app repository to your local machine:

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/php-docs-samples

   Alternatively, download the sample as a zip file and extract it.

2. Change to the directory that contains the sample code:

   cd php-docs-samples/endpoints/getting-started

Ruby

To clone or download the sample API:

1. Clone the sample app repository to your local machine:

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/ruby-docs-samples

   Alternatively, download the sample as a zip file and extract it.

2. Change to the directory that contains the sample code:

   cd ruby-docs-samples/endpoints/getting-started

NodeJS

To clone or download the sample API:

1. Clone the sample app repository to your local machine:

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/nodejs-docs-samples

   Alternatively, download the sample as a zip file and extract it.

2. Change to the directory that contains the sample code:

   cd nodejs-docs-samples/endpoints/getting-started

Configuring Endpoints

The sample code includes the OpenAPI configuration file, openapi.yaml, which is based on OpenAPI Specification v2.0. You configure and deploy openapi.yaml on your local machine. To configure Endpoints:

1. In the sample code directory, open the openapi.yaml configuration file.
   Java

   swagger: "2.0"
   info:
     description: "A simple Google Cloud Endpoints API example."
     title: "Endpoints Example"
     version: "1.0.0"
   host: "echo-api.endpoints.YOUR-PROJECT-ID.cloud.goog"

   Python

   swagger: "2.0"
   info:
     description: "A simple Google Cloud Endpoints API example."
     title: "Endpoints Example"
     version: "1.0.0"
   host: "echo-api.endpoints.YOUR-PROJECT-ID.cloud.goog"

   Go

   swagger: "2.0"
   info:
     description: "A simple Google Cloud Endpoints API example."
     title: "Endpoints Example"
     version: "1.0.0"
   host: "echo-api.endpoints.YOUR-PROJECT-ID.cloud.goog"

   PHP

   swagger: "2.0"
   info:
     description: "A simple Google Cloud Endpoints API example."
     title: "Endpoints Example"
     version: "1.0.0"
   host: "echo-api.endpoints.YOUR-PROJECT-ID.cloud.goog"

   Ruby

   swagger: "2.0"
   info:
     description: "A simple Google Cloud Endpoints API example."
     title: "Endpoints Example"
     version: "1.0.0"
   host: "echo-api.endpoints.YOUR-PROJECT-ID.cloud.goog"

   NodeJS

   swagger: "2.0"
   info:
     description: "A simple Google Cloud Endpoints API example."
     title: "Endpoints Example"
     version: "1.0.0"
   host: "echo-api.endpoints.YOUR-PROJECT-ID.cloud.goog"

   Note the following:

   • The configuration sample displays the lines near the host field, which you need to modify. To deploy the openapi.yaml file to Endpoints, the complete OpenAPI document is required.
   • The example openapi.yaml file contains a section for configuring authentication that isn't needed for this tutorial. You don't need to configure the lines with YOUR-SERVICE-ACCOUNT-EMAIL and YOUR-CLIENT-ID.
   • OpenAPI is a language-agnostic specification. The same openapi.yaml file is in the getting-started sample in each language GitHub repository for convenience.

2. In the host field, replace the text with the Endpoints service name, which should be in the following format:

   host: "echo-api.endpoints.YOUR_PROJECT_ID.cloud.goog"

   Replace YOUR_PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project ID. For example:

   host: "echo-api.endpoints.example-project-12345.cloud.goog"

Note that echo-api.endpoints.YOUR_PROJECT_ID.cloud.goog is the Endpoints service name. It isn't the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) that you use for sending requests to the API.

For information about the fields in the OpenAPI document that Endpoints requires, see Configuring Endpoints. After you have finished all the following configuration steps such that you can successfully send requests to the sample API by using an IP address, see Configuring Endpoints DNS for information on how to configure echo-api.endpoints.YOUR_PROJECT_ID.cloud.goog to be the FQDN.

Deploying the Endpoints configuration

To deploy the Endpoints configuration, you use the gcloud endpoints services deploy command. This command uses Service Management to create a managed service.

To deploy the Endpoints configuration:

1. Make sure you are in the endpoints/getting-started directory.
2. Upload the configuration and create a managed service:

   gcloud endpoints services deploy openapi.yaml
   

The gcloud command then calls the Service Management API to create a managed service with the name that you specified in the host field of the openapi.yaml file. Service Management configures the service according to the settings in the openapi.yaml file. When you make changes to openapi.yaml, you must redeploy the file to update the Endpoints service.

As it is creating and configuring the service, Service Management outputs information to the terminal. You can safely ignore the warnings about the paths in the openapi.yaml file not requiring an API key. When it finishes configuring the service, Service Management displays a message with the service configuration ID and the service name, similar to the following:

Service Configuration [2017-02-13r0] uploaded for service [echo-api.endpoints.example-project-12345.cloud.goog]

In the preceding example, 2017-02-13r0 is the service configuration ID, and echo-api.endpoints.example-project-12345.cloud.goog is the Endpoints service. The service configuration ID consists of a date stamp followed by a revision number. If you deploy the openapi.yaml file again on the same day, the revision number is incremented in the service configuration ID. You can view the Endpoints service configuration on the Endpoints > Services page in the Google Cloud console.

If you get an error message, see Troubleshooting Endpoints configuration deployment.

Checking required services

At a minimum, Endpoints and ESP require the following Google services to be enabled:

Name	Title
servicemanagement.googleapis.com	Service Management API
servicecontrol.googleapis.com	Service Control API

In most cases, the gcloud endpoints services deploy command enables these required services. However, the gcloud command completes successfully but doesn't enable the required services in the following circumstances:

• If you used a third-party application such as Terraform, and you don't include these services.

• You deployed the Endpoints configuration to an existing Google Cloud project in which these services were explicitly disabled.

Use the following command to confirm that the required services are enabled:

gcloud services list

If you do not see the required services listed, enable them:

gcloud services enable servicemanagement.googleapis.com
gcloud services enable servicecontrol.googleapis.com

Also enable your Endpoints service:

gcloud services enable ENDPOINTS_SERVICE_NAME

To determine the ENDPOINTS_SERVICE_NAME you can either:

• After deploying the Endpoints configuration, go to the Endpoints page in the Cloud console. The list of possible ENDPOINTS_SERVICE_NAME are shown under the Service name column.

• For OpenAPI, the ENDPOINTS_SERVICE_NAME is what you specified in the host field of your OpenAPI spec. For gRPC, the ENDPOINTS_SERVICE_NAME is what you specified in the name field of your gRPC Endpoints configuration.

For more information about the gcloud commands, see gcloud services.

Deploying the API Backend

Create an instance template

Create a template that you will use to create a group of VM instances. Each instance created from the template launches an ESPv2 and a backend application server.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Instance templates page.

   Go to Instance templates

2. Click Create instance template.

3. Under Name, enter load-balancing-espv2-template.

4. Under Machine configuration, set the Machine type to e2-micro.

5. Under Boot disk, set the Image to Container Optimized OS stable version.

6. Under Firewall, select Allow HTTP traffic.

7. Click Management, security, disks, networking, sole tenancy to reveal the advanced settings.

8. Click the Management tab. Under Automation, enter the following Startup script. Remember to update ENDPOINTS_SERVICE_NAME.

   sudo docker network create --driver bridge esp_net
   sudo docker run \
     --detach \
     --name=echo \
     --net=esp_net \
     gcr.io/google-samples/echo-python:1.0
   sudo docker run \
     --detach \
     --name=esp \
     --publish=80:9000 \
     --net=esp_net \
     gcr.io/endpoints-release/endpoints-runtime:2 \
     --service=ENDPOINTS_SERVICE_NAME \
     --rollout_strategy=managed \
     --listener_port=9000 \
     --healthz=/healthz \
     --backend=echo:8080
   

   The script gets, installs, and launches the echo application server and the ESPv2 proxy server at instance startup.

9. Click Create.

Wait until the template has been created before continuing.

Create a regional managed instance group

To run the application, use the instance template to create a regional managed instance group:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Instance groups page.

   Go to Instance groups

2. Click Create instance group.

3. Under Name, enter load-balancing-espv2-group.

4. Under Location, select Multiple zones.

   Pro Tip: To ensure your application is available during extreme events, like zonal outages, Compute Engine recommends that you distribute your application across multiple zones.

5. Under Region, select us-central1.

6. Click the Configure zones drop-down menu to reveal Zones. Select the following zones:

   • us-central1-b
   • us-central1-c
   • us-central1-f

7. Under Instance template, select load-balancing-espv2-template.

8. Under Autoscaling, select Don't autoscale.

9. Set Number of instances to 3.

   Pro Tip: When creating a regional managed instance group, Compute Engine recommends that you provision enough instances so that, if all of the instances in any one zone are unavailable, the remaining instances still meet the minimum number of instances that you require. However, provisioning more instances than you need might incur additional costs. For more information, see Selecting instance group size to ensure availability.

10. Under Instance redistribution, select On.

11. Under Autohealing and Health check, select No health check.

12. Click Create. This redirects you back to the Instance groups page.

    Note: You might need to wait a few minutes until all of the instances in the group are running and ready to display the web application.

Create a load balancer

This section explains the steps required to create a global load balancer that directs HTTP traffic to your instance group.

This load balancer uses a frontend to receive incoming traffic and a backend to distribute this traffic to healthy instances. Because the load balancer is made of multiple components, this task is divided into several parts:

• Backend configuration
• Frontend configuration
• Review and finalize

Complete all the steps to create the load balancer.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create a load balancer page.

   Go to Create a load balancer

2. In the Application Load Balancer (HTTP/S) section, click Start configuration.

3. Under Internet facing or internal only, select From Internet to my VMs. Then, click Continue.

4. For the Name of the load balancer, enter espv2-load-balancer.

Backend configuration

1. In the left panel of the Create global external Application Load Balancer page, click Backend configuration.
2. Click Create or select backend services & backend buckets to open a drop-down menu. Click Backend services, then click Create a backend service.
3. In the new window, for the Name of the backend application, enter espv2-backend.
4. Set Instance group to load-balancing-espv2-group.
5. Set Port numbers to 80. This allows HTTP traffic between the load balancer and the instance group.
6. Under Balancing mode, select Utilization.
7. Click Done to create the backend.

8. Create the health check for the backend of the load balancer:

   Pro Tip: Health checks are used for both load balancing and autohealing, but for different purposes:

   • Health checks for load balancing are used for detecting unresponsive instances and directing traffic away from them.
   • Health checks for autohealing are used for detecting and recreating failed instances.

   Use separate health checks for load balancing and for autohealing. Using the same health check for these services would remove the distinction between unresponsive instances and failed instances, causing unnecessary latency and/or unavailability for your users. For more information, see Health check concepts.

   1. Under Health check, select Create a health check (or Create another health check) from the drop-down menu. A new window opens.
   2. In the new window under Name, enter espv2-load-balancer-check.
   3. Set the Protocol to HTTP.
   4. Under Port, enter 80.
   5. For this tutorial, set the Request path to /healthz, which is a path that the ESPv2 is set up to respond to.

   6. Set the following Health criteria:

      1. Set Check interval to 3 seconds. This defines the amount of time from the start of one probe to the start of the next one.
      2. Set Timeout to 3 seconds. This defines the amount of time that Google Cloud waits for a response to a probe. Its value must be less than or equal to the check interval.
      3. Set Healthy Threshold to 2 consecutive successes. This defines the number of sequential probes that must succeed in order for the instance to be considered healthy.
      4. Set Unhealthy Threshold to 2consecutive failures. This defines the number of sequential probes that must fail in order for the instance to be considered unhealthy.

      Pro Tip: For information about refining the Check interval and Timeout values for your own application, see How health checks work. To refine the Healthy Threshold and Unhealthy Threshold values for your own application, use the following criteria:

      • If traffic is being directed to instances with high latency even when faster instances are available, decrease the threshold for traffic by making your health check more aggressive.
      • If traffic is being directed away from instances with low latency, increase the threshold for traffic by making your health check more conservative.

      For detailed information about optimizing and measuring latency, see Optimizing Application Latency with Load Balancing

   7. Click Save and continue to create the health check.

9. Click Create to create the backend service.

Frontend configuration

1. In the left panel of the Create global external Application Load Balancer page, click Frontend configuration.
2. On the Frontend configuration page, under Name, enter espv2-ipv4-frontend.
3. Set the Protocol to HTTP.
4. Set the Port to 80.
5. Click Done to create the frontend.

Review and finalize

1. Verify your load balancing settings before creating the load balancer:

   1. In the left panel of the Create global external Application Load Balancer page, click Review and finalize.

   2. On the Review and finalize page, verify the following Backend settings:

      • The Backend service is espv2-backend.
      • The Endpoint protocol is HTTP.
      • The Health check is espv2-load-balancer-check.
      • The Instance group is load-balancing-espv2-group.

   3. On the same page, verify that Frontend uses an IP address with a Protocol of HTTP.

2. In the left panel of the Create global external Application Load Balancer page, click Create to finish creating the load balancer.

   You might need to wait a few minutes for the load balancer creation to finish.

3. After the load balancer is created, find the IP address from the Load Balancer page.

   Go to Load Balancer

Sending a request by using an IP address

After the sample API and ESPv2 are running on the deployed backend, you can send requests to the API from your local machine.

Create an API key and set an environment variable

The sample code requires an API key. To simplify the request, you set an environment variable for the API key.

1. In the same Google Cloud project that you used for your API, create an API key on the API credentials page. If you want to create an API key in a different Google Cloud project, see Enabling an API in your Google Cloud project.

   Go to the Credentials page

2. Click Create credentials, and then select API key.
3. Copy the key to the clipboard.
4. Click Close.
5. On your local computer, paste the API key to assign it to an environment variable:
   • In Linux or macOS: export ENDPOINTS_KEY=AIza...
   • In Windows PowerShell: $Env:ENDPOINTS_KEY="AIza..."

Send the request

Linux or mac OS

Use curl to send an HTTP request by using the ENDPOINTS_KEY environment variable you set previously. Replace IP_ADDRESS with the external IP address of your instance.

curl --request POST \
   --header "content-type:application/json" \
   --data '{"message":"hello world"}' \
   "http://IP_ADDRESS:80/echo?key=${ENDPOINTS_KEY}"

In the preceding curl:

• The --data option specifies the data to post to the API.
• The --header option specifies that the data is in JSON format.

PowerShell

Use Invoke-WebRequest to send an HTTP request by using the ENDPOINTS_KEY environment variable you set previously. Replace IP_ADDRESS with the external IP address of your instance.

(Invoke-WebRequest -Method POST -Body '{"message": "hello world"}' `
    -Headers @{"content-type"="application/json"} `
    -URI "http://IP_ADDRESS:80/echo?key=$Env:ENDPOINTS_KEY").Content

In the previous example, the first two lines end in a backtick. When you paste the example into PowerShell, make sure there isn't a space following the backticks. For information about the options used in the example request, see Invoke-WebRequest in the Microsoft documentation.

Third-party app

You can use a third-party application such as the Chrome browser extension Postman to send the request:

• Select POST as the HTTP verb.
• For the header, select the key content-type and the value application/json.
• For the body, enter the following:
  {"message":"hello world"}
• In the URL, use the actual API key rather than the environment variable. For example:
  http://192.0.2.0:80/echo?key=AIza...

The API echoes back the message that you send, and responds with the following:

{
  "message": "hello world"
}

If you didn't get a successful response, see Troubleshooting response errors.

You just deployed and tested an API in Endpoints!

Note: If you want to let us know what you liked about this tutorial, feel free to provide feedback at the bottom of this page. Your feedback helps us improve these tutorials.
If you got an error, join the google-cloud-endpoints Google group and let us know what went wrong. This group receives responses from other Endpoints users and from Google engineers, who monitor the group.

Configuring DNS for Endpoints

Because the Endpoints service name for the API is in the .endpoints.YOUR_PROJECT_ID.cloud.goog domain, you can use it as the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) by making a small configuration change in your openapi.yaml file. This way, you can send requests to the sample API by using echo-api.endpoints.YOUR_PROJECT_ID.cloud.goog instead of the IP address.

To configure Endpoints DNS:

1. Open your OpenAPI configuration file, openapi.yaml, and add the x-google-endpoints property at the top level of the file (not indented or nested) as shown in the following snippet:

   host: "echo-api.endpoints.YOUR_PROJECT_ID.cloud.goog"
   x-google-endpoints:
   - name: "echo-api.endpoints.YOUR_PROJECT_ID.cloud.goog"
     target: "IP_ADDRESS"

2. In the name property, replace YOUR_PROJECT_ID with your project ID.
3. In the target property, replace IP_ADDRESS with the IP address that you used when you sent a request to the sample API.
4. Deploy your updated OpenAPI configuration file to Service Management:

   gcloud endpoints services deploy openapi.yaml
   

For example, assume the openapi.yaml file has the following configured:

host: "echo-api.endpoints.example-project-12345.cloud.goog"
x-google-endpoints:
- name: "echo-api.endpoints.example-project-12345.cloud.goog"
  target: "192.0.2.1"

When you deploy the openapi.yaml file by using the preceding gcloud command, Service Management creates a DNS A-record, echo-api.endpoints.my-project-id.cloud.goog, which resolves to the target IP address, 192.0.2.1. It might take a few minutes for the new DNS configuration to propagate.

Configuring SSL

For more details on how to configure DNS and SSL, see Enabling SSL for Endpoints.

Sending a request by using FQDN

Now that you have the DNS record configured for the sample API, send a request to it by using the FQDN (replace YOUR_PROJECT_ID with your project ID) and the ENDPOINTS_KEY environment variable set previously:

• In Linux or mac OS:

  curl --request POST \
      --header "content-type:application/json" \
      --data '{"message":"hello world"}' \
      "http://echo-api.endpoints.YOUR_PROJECT_ID.cloud.goog:80/echo?key=${ENDPOINTS_KEY}"

• In Windows PowerShell:

  (Invoke-WebRequest -Method POST -Body '{"message": "hello world"}' -Headers @{"content-type"="application/json"} -URI "http://echo-api.endpoints.[YOUR_PROJECT_ID].cloud.goog:80/echo?key=$Env:ENDPOINTS_KEY").Content

Tracking API activity

To track API activity:

1. Look at the activity graphs for your API in the Endpoints > Services page.
   

   Go to the Endpoints Services page

   
   It may take a few moments for the request to be reflected in the graphs.
2. Look at the request logs for your API in the Logs Explorer page.
   

   Go to the Logs Explorer page

Creating a developer portal for the API

You can use Cloud Endpoints Portal to create a developer portal, a website that you can use to interact with the sample API. To learn more, see Cloud Endpoints Portal overview.

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used in this tutorial, either delete the project that contains the resources, or keep the project and delete the individual resources.

1. Make sure that the gcloud CLI (gcloud) is authorized to access your data and services on Google Cloud:

   gcloud auth login
   

2. Enter the following to display the project IDs for your Google Cloud projects:

   gcloud projects list
   

3. Using the applicable project ID from the previous step, set the default Google Cloud project to the one that your application is in:

   gcloud config set project [YOUR_PROJECT_ID]
   

4. Obtain the name of all managed services in your Google Cloud project:

   gcloud endpoints services list
   

5. Delete the service from Service Management. Replace SERVICE_NAME with the name of the service you want to remove.

   gcloud endpoints services delete SERVICE_NAME
   

   Running gcloud endpoints services delete doesn't immediately delete the managed service. Service Management disables the managed service for 30 days, which allows you time to restore it if you need to. After 30 days, Service Management permanently deletes the managed service.

6. Go to the Load Balancer page.

   Go to Load Balancer

   Delete load balancer espv2-load-balancer with backend service espv2-backend and health check espv2-load-balancer-check.

7. Go to the Instance Groups page.

   Go to Instance Groups

   Delete load-balancing-espv2-group

8. Go to the Instance Template page.

   Go to Instance Templates

   Delete load-balancing-espv2-template.

What's next

• Share your API with another developer
• Learn more about authentication
• Learn about community support options