Concepts

Overview documents

• Cloud Load Balancing overview

  An overview of the different load balancing solutions that are available on Google Cloud.

• Choosing a load balancer

  A guide to help you determine which Google Cloud load balancer best meets your needs.

Access control

• Access control overview

  A guide to load balancer permissions.

• IAM Conditions for forwarding rules

  A guide to setting conditions on who can configure each type of forwarding rule.

Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancing

• Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancing overview

  An overview of Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancing, including traffic types, scheme, and scope, as well as use cases and architecture.

• Traffic management overview

  Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancing supports advanced traffic management functionality that enables you to use traffic steering, traffic actions, and traffic policies.

• Load balancer access from connected networks

  Provides scenarios for accessing an internal load balancer in your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network from a connected network.

External HTTP(S) Load Balancing

• External HTTP(S) Load Balancing overview

  An introduction to the information that you need to configure external HTTP(S) Load Balancing.

Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancing

• Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancing overview

  An overview of Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancing, which enables you to run and scale your services behind a private load balancing IP address that is accessible only to your internal virtual machine (VM) instances.

• Load balancer access from connected networks

  Provides scenarios for accessing an internal load balancer in your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network from a connected network.

• Failover for load balancing

  Provides one method of increasing availability, while also giving you greater control over how to manage your workload when your primary backend VMs aren't healthy.

• Internal TCP/UDP load balancers as next hops

  You can use an internal TCP/UDP load balancer as the next gateway to which packets are forwarded along the path to their final destination by setting the load balancer as the next hop in a custom static route.

• Internal TCP/UDP load balancers and forwarding rules with a common IP address

  You can use multiple forwarding rules with the same IP address for an internal TCP/UDP load balancer.

External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancing

• External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancing overview

  An overview of Network Load Balancing, including protocols, scheme, scope, and the types of backends available for a network load balancer.

• External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancing with a backend service

  An overview of Network Load Balancing with a regional backend service.

• Failover overview for external TCP/UDP Network Load Balancing with a backend service

  An overview of failover policies for Network Load Balancing with a regional backend service.

• External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancing with a target pool

  An overview of Network Load Balancing with a target pool.

External SSL Proxy Load Balancing and TCP Proxy Load Balancing

• SSL Proxy Load Balancing overview

  SSL Proxy Load Balancing terminates user SSL (TLS) connections at the load balancing layer, and then balances the connections across your instances by using the SSL or TCP protocols. The SSL proxy is intended for non-HTTP(S) traffic.

• TCP Proxy Load Balancing overview

  TCP Proxy Load Balancing allows you to use a single IP address for all users around the world. The TCP proxy load balancer automatically routes traffic to the instances that are closest to the user. The TCP proxy is intended for non-HTTP(S) traffic.

Network endpoint groups

• Network endpoint groups overview

  An introduction to using network endpoint groups (NEGs) as the backend for a backend service.

• Internet NEGs

  An internet NEG is a backend that resides outside of Google Cloud. You should use an internet NEG when you want to serve content from an origin that is hosted outside of Google Cloud, and you want an external HTTP(S) load balancer to be the frontend.

• Serverless NEGs

  Serverless NEGs allow you to use App Engine, Cloud Run, or Cloud Functions as backends for external HTTP(S) Load Balancing.

• Zonal NEGs

  Zonal NEGs can be used as backends for backend services. The primary use case for this configuration is deploying containers on your VMs so that you can run services in the containers.

Load balancing components

• Backend services

  An overview of backend services for your load balancer. A backend service contains configuration values for load balancing services.

• Forwarding rules

  A forwarding rule and its corresponding IP address represent the frontend configuration of a Google Cloud load balancer.

• Health checks

  An overview of health checking mechanisms specific to Google Cloud and its load balancers.

• IPv6 termination for HTTP(S), SSL Proxy, and TCP Proxy Load Balancing

  IPv6 termination enables you to handle IPv6 requests from your users and proxy them over IPv4 to your backends.

• SSL certificates overview

  Google Cloud uses SSL certificates to provide privacy and security from a client to a load balancer.

• Encryption from the load balancer to the backends

  For some load balancing types, Google Cloud provides encryption for your backends that reside within Google Cloud.

• SSL policies

  SSL policies give you the ability to control the features of SSL that your SSL proxy load balancer or external HTTP(S) load balancer negotiates with clients.

• URL maps

  HTTP(S)-based load balancers use a URL map to direct incoming requests to backend services and backend buckets.