This document provides instructions for configuring a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer for your services that run on Compute Engine VMs.
Because regional external HTTP(S) load balancers allow you to create load balancers in specific regions, they are often used for workloads that have jurisdictional compliance requirements. Workloads that require access to Standard Network Tier egress are another common use case for regional external HTTP(S) load balancers, because the regional external HTTP(S) load balancers support the Standard Network Service Tier.
Alternative solutions
To configure global external HTTP(S) load balancers, see the following:
To configure load balancing for your services running in GKE pods, see Container-native load balancing with standalone NEGs and the Attaching a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer to standalone NEGs section.
To configure load balancing to access Google APIs and services using Private Service Connect, see Configuring Private Service Connect with consumer HTTP(S) service controls.
Preparing for the setup
The setup for a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer has two parts:
- Performing prerequisite tasks, such as ensuring that required accounts have the correct permissions and preparing the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network.
- Setting up the load balancer resources.
Before following this guide, familiarize yourself with the following:
Permissions
To follow this guide, you must be able to create instances and modify a network in a project. You must be either a project owner or editor, or you must have all of the following Compute Engine IAM roles.
Task | Required role |
---|---|
Create networks, subnets, and load balancer components | Network Admin |
Add and remove firewall rules | Security Admin |
Create instances | Instance Admin |
For more information, see the following guides:
Setup overview
You can configure a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer as described in the following high-level configuration flow. The numbered steps refer to the numbers in the diagram.
As shown in the diagram, this example creates a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer in a
VPC network in region us-west1
, with one backend service
and two backend instance groups.
The diagram shows the following:
A VPC network with two subnets:
One subnet is used for backends (instance groups). Its primary IP address range is
10.1.2.0/24
.One subnet is a proxy-only subnet in the
us-west1
region. You must create one proxy-only subnet in each region of a VPC network where you use regional external HTTP(S) load balancers. The region's proxy-only subnet is shared among all regional load balancers in the region. Source addresses of packets sent from the load balancers to your service's backends are allocated from the proxy-only subnet. In this example, the proxy-only subnet for the region has a primary IP address range of10.129.0.0/23
, which is the recommended subnet size. For more information, see Proxy-only subnets.
A firewall rule that permits proxy-only subnet traffic flows in your network. This means adding one rule that allows TCP port
80
,443
, and8080
traffic from10.129.0.0/23
(the range of the proxy-only subnet in this example). Another firewall rule for the health check probes.Backend instances.
Instance groups:
- Managed or unmanaged instance groups for Compute Engine VM deployments
- NEGs for GKE deployments
In each zone, you can have a combination of backend group types based on the requirements of your deployment.
A regional health check that reports the readiness of your backends.
A regional backend service that monitors the usage and health of backends.
A regional URL map that parses the URL of a request and forwards requests to specific backend services based on the host and path of the request URL.
A regional target HTTP or HTTPS proxy, which receives a request from the user and forwards it to the URL map. For HTTPS, configure a regional SSL certificate resource. The target proxy uses the SSL certificate to decrypt SSL traffic if you configure HTTPS load balancing. The target proxy can forward traffic to your instances by using HTTP or HTTPS.
A forwarding rule, which has the external IP address of your load balancer to forward each incoming request to the target proxy.
The external IP address that is associated with the forwarding rule is reserved by using the
gcloud beta compute addresses create
command, as described in Reserving the load balancer's IP address.
Configuring the network and subnets
You need a VPC network with two subnets: one for the load balancer's backends and the other for the load balancer's proxies. A regional external HTTP(S) load balancer is regional. Traffic within the VPC network is routed to the load balancer if the traffic's source is in a subnet in the same region as the load balancer.
This example uses the following VPC network, region, and subnets:
Network. The network is a custom-mode VPC network named
lb-network
.Subnet for backends. A subnet named
backend-subnet
in theus-west1
region uses10.1.2.0/24
for its primary IP range.Subnet for proxies. A subnet named
proxy-only-subnet
in theus-west1
region uses10.129.0.0/23
for its primary IP range.
Configuring the network and subnet for backends
gcloud
Create the custom VPC network with the
gcloud beta compute networks create
command:gcloud beta compute networks create lb-network --subnet-mode=custom
Create a subnet in the
lb-network
network in theus-west1
region with thegcloud beta compute networks subnets create
command:gcloud beta compute networks subnets create backend-subnet \ --network=lb-network \ --range=10.1.2.0/24 \ --region=us-west1
API
Make a
POST
request to thenetworks.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID with your project ID.POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks { "routingConfig": { "routingMode": "REGIONAL" }, "name": "lb-network", "autoCreateSubnetworks": false }
Make a
POST
request to thesubnetworks.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID with your project ID.POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/subnetworks { "name": "backend-subnet", "network": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/lb-network", "ipCidrRange": "10.1.2.0/24", "region": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1", }
Configuring the proxy-only subnet
The proxy-only subnet is for all regional external HTTP(S) load balancers in the same region and VPC network.
gcloud
Create the proxy-only subnet with the gcloud beta compute networks subnets
create
command.
gcloud beta compute networks subnets create proxy-only-subnet \ --purpose=REGIONAL_MANAGED_PROXY \ --role=ACTIVE \ --region=us-west1 \ --network=lb-network \ --range=10.129.0.0/23
API
Create the proxy-only subnet with the
subnetworks.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID with your project ID.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/subnetworks { "name": "proxy-only-subnet", "ipCidrRange": "10.129.0.0/23", "network": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/lb-network", "region": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1", "purpose": "REGIONAL_MANAGED_PROXY", "role": "ACTIVE" }
Configuring firewall rules
This example uses the following firewall rules:
fw-allow-ssh
. An ingress rule, applicable to the instances being load balanced, that allows incoming SSH connectivity on TCP port22
from any address. You can choose a more restrictive source IP range for this rule; for example, you can specify just the IP ranges of the system from which you initiate SSH sessions. This example uses the target tagallow-ssh
.fw-allow-health-check
. An ingress rule, applicable to the instances being load balanced, that allows all TCP traffic from the Google Cloud health checking systems (in130.211.0.0/22
and35.191.0.0/16
). This example uses the target tagload-balanced-backend
.fw-allow-proxies
. An ingress rule, applicable to the instances being load balanced, that allows TCP traffic on ports80
,443
, and8080
from the regional external HTTP(S) load balancer's managed proxies. This example uses the target tagload-balanced-backend
.
Without these firewall rules, the default deny ingress rule blocks incoming traffic to the backend instances.
The target tags define the backend instances. Without the target tags, the firewall rules apply to all of your backend instances in the VPC network. When you create the backend VMs, make sure to include the specified target tags, as shown in Creating a managed instance group.
Console
- Go to the Firewall rules page in the Google Cloud console.
Go to the Firewall rules page - Click Create firewall rule to create the rule to allow incoming
SSH connections:
- Name:
fw-allow-ssh
- Network:
lb-network
- Direction of traffic: Ingress
- Action on match: Allow
- Targets: Specified target tags
- Target tags:
allow-ssh
- Source filter: IPv4 ranges
- Source IP ranges:
0.0.0.0/0
- Protocols and ports:
- Choose Specified protocols and ports.
- Select the tcp checkbox, and then enter
22
for the port number.
- Name:
- Click Create.
- Click Create firewall rule a second time to create the rule to allow
Google Cloud health checks:
- Name:
fw-allow-health-check
- Network:
lb-network
- Direction of traffic: Ingress
- Action on match: Allow
- Targets: Specified target tags
- Target tags:
load-balanced-backend
- Source filter: IPv4 ranges
- Source IPv4 ranges:
130.211.0.0/22
and35.191.0.0/16
- Protocols and ports:
- Choose Specified protocols and ports.
- Select the tcp checkbox, and then enter
80
for the port number. As a best practice, limit this rule to just the protocols and ports that match those used by your health check. If you usetcp:80
for the protocol and port, Google Cloud can use HTTP on port80
to contact your VMs, but it cannot use HTTPS on port443
to contact them.
- Name:
- Click Create.
- Click Create firewall rule a third time to create the rule to allow
the load balancer's proxy servers to connect the backends:
- Name:
fw-allow-proxies
- Network:
lb-network
- Direction of traffic: Ingress
- Action on match: Allow
- Targets: Specified target tags
- Target tags:
load-balanced-backend
- Source filter: IPv4 ranges
- Source IPv4 ranges:
10.129.0.0/23
- Protocols and ports:
- Choose Specified protocols and ports.
- Select the tcp checkbox, and then enter
80, 443, 8080
for the port numbers.
- Name:
- Click Create.
gcloud
Create the
fw-allow-ssh
firewall rule to allow SSH connectivity to VMs with the network tagallow-ssh
. When you omitsource-ranges
, Google Cloud interprets the rule to mean any source.gcloud beta compute firewall-rules create fw-allow-ssh \ --network=lb-network \ --action=allow \ --direction=ingress \ --target-tags=allow-ssh \ --rules=tcp:22
Create the
fw-allow-health-check
rule to allow Google Cloud health checks. This example allows all TCP traffic from health check probers; however, you can configure a narrower set of ports to meet your needs.gcloud beta compute firewall-rules create fw-allow-health-check \ --network=lb-network \ --action=allow \ --direction=ingress \ --source-ranges=130.211.0.0/22,35.191.0.0/16 \ --target-tags=load-balanced-backend \ --rules=tcp
Create the
fw-allow-proxies
rule to allow the regional external HTTP(S) load balancer's proxies to connect to your backends. Setsource-ranges
to the allocated ranges of your proxy-only subnet, for example,10.129.0.0/23
.gcloud beta compute firewall-rules create fw-allow-proxies \ --network=lb-network \ --action=allow \ --direction=ingress \ --source-ranges=source-range \ --target-tags=load-balanced-backend \ --rules=tcp:80,tcp:443,tcp:8080
API
Create the fw-allow-ssh
firewall rule by making a POST
request to
the firewalls.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID with your project ID.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/firewalls { "name": "fw-allow-ssh", "network": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/lb-network", "sourceRanges": [ "0.0.0.0/0" ], "targetTags": [ "allow-ssh" ], "allowed": [ { "IPProtocol": "tcp", "ports": [ "22" ] } ], "direction": "INGRESS" }
Create the fw-allow-health-check
firewall rule by making a POST
request to
the firewalls.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID with your project ID.
API
Create a firewall rule.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/firewalls { "name": "fw-allow-health-check", "network": "projects/PROJECT-ID/global/networks/lb-network", "sourceRanges": [ "130.211.0.0/22", "35.191.0.0/16" ], "targetTags": [ "load-balanced-backend" ], "allowed": [ { "IPProtocol": "tcp" } ], "direction": "INGRESS" }
Create the fw-allow-proxies
firewall rule to allow TCP traffic within the
proxy subnet for the
firewalls.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID with your project ID.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/firewalls { "name": "fw-allow-proxies", "network": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/lb-network", "sourceRanges": [ "10.129.0.0/23" ], "targetTags": [ "load-balanced-backend" ], "allowed": [ { "IPProtocol": "tcp", "ports": [ "80" ] }, { "IPProtocol": "tcp", "ports": [ "443" ] }, { "IPProtocol": "tcp", "ports": [ "8080" ] } ], "direction": "INGRESS" }
Configuring a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer with a VM-based service
This section shows the configuration required for services that run on Compute Engine VMs. Client VMs connect to the IP address and port that you configure in the forwarding rule. When your client applications send traffic to this IP address and port, their requests are forwarded to your backend virtual machines (VMs) according to your regional external HTTP(S) load balancer's URL map.
The example on this page explicitly sets a reserved external IP address for the regional external HTTP(S) load balancer's forwarding rule, rather than allowing an ephemeral external IP address to be allocated. As a best practice, we recommend reserving IP addresses for forwarding rules.
For the forwarding rule's IP address, use the backend-subnet
. If you
try to use the proxy-only
subnet, forwarding rule
creation fails.
Creating a managed instance group
This section shows how to create a template and a managed instance group. The managed instance group provides VM instances running the backend servers of an example regional external HTTP(S) load balancer. Traffic from clients is load balanced to these backend servers. For demonstration purposes, backends serve their own hostnames.
Cloud console
Create an instance template. In the Cloud console, go to the Instance templates page.
- Click Create instance template.
- For Name, enter
l7-xlb-backend-template
. - Ensure that the Boot disk is set to a Debian image, such as
Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch). These instructions use commands that
are only available on Debian, such as
apt-get
. Under Management, security, disks, networking, sole tenancy, on the Management tab, insert the following script into the Startup script field.
#! /bin/bash sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install apache2 -y sudo a2ensite default-ssl sudo a2enmod ssl sudo vm_hostname="$(curl -H "Metadata-Flavor:Google" \ http://169.254.169.254/computeMetadata/v1/instance/name)" sudo echo "Page served from: $vm_hostname" | \ tee /var/www/html/index.html sudo systemctl restart apache2
Under Networking, select
lb-network
as the Network, and for the Subnet, selectbackend-subnet
.Add the following network tags:
allow-ssh
andload-balanced-backend
.Click Create.
Create a managed instance group.
Go to the Instance groups page in the Cloud console.- Click Create instance group.
- Select New managed instance group (stateless). For more information, see Stateless or stateful MIGs.
- For Name, enter
l7-xlb-backend-example
. - Under Location, select Single zone.
- For Region, select
us-west1
. - For Zone, select
us-west1-a
. - Under Instance template, select
l7-xlb-backend-template
. Control the number of instances that get created in the group by selecting one of the following under Autoscaling:
On: add and remove instances to the group
Scale up: only add instances to the group
Off: do not autoscale
Set the Minimum number of instances to
2
, and set the Maximum number of instances to2
or more.Click Create.
gcloud
The gcloud
instructions in this guide assume that you are using Cloud
Shell or another environment with bash installed.
Create a VM instance template with HTTP server with the
gcloud beta compute instance-templates create
command.gcloud beta compute instance-templates create l7-xlb-backend-template \ --region=us-west1 \ --network=lb-network \ --subnet=backend-subnet \ --tags=allow-ssh,load-balanced-backend \ --image-family=debian-9 \ --image-project=debian-cloud \ --metadata=startup-script='#! /bin/bash sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install apache2 -y sudo a2ensite default-ssl sudo a2enmod ssl sudo vm_hostname="$(curl -H "Metadata-Flavor:Google" \ http://169.254.169.254/computeMetadata/v1/instance/name)" sudo echo "Page served from: $vm_hostname" | \ tee /var/www/html/index.html sudo systemctl restart apache2'
Create a managed instance group in the zone with the
gcloud beta compute instance-groups managed create
command.gcloud beta compute instance-groups managed create l7-xlb-backend-example \ --zone=us-west1-a \ --size=2 \ --template=l7-xlb-backend-template
API
Create the instance template with the
instanceTemplates.insert
method, replacingPROJECT_ID
with your project ID.POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/instanceTemplates { "name":"l7-xlb-backend-template", "properties": { "machineType":"e2-standard-2", "tags": { "items":[ "allow-ssh", "load-balanced-backend" ] }, "metadata": { "kind":"compute#metadata", "items":[ { "key":"startup-script", "value":"#! /bin/bash\nsudo apt-get update\nsudo apt-get install apache2 -y\nsudo a2ensite default-ssl\nsudo a2enmod ssl\nsudo vm_hostname=\"$(curl -H \"Metadata-Flavor:Google\" \\\nhttp://169.254.169.254/computeMetadata/v1/instance/name)\"\nsudo echo \"Page served from: $vm_hostname\" | \\\ntee /var/www/html/index.html\nsudo systemctl restart apache2" } ] }, "networkInterfaces":[ { "network":"projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/lb-network", "subnetwork":"regions/us-west1/subnetworks/backend-subnet", "accessConfigs":[ { "type":"ONE_TO_ONE_NAT" } ] } ], "disks": [ { "index":0, "boot":true, "initializeParams": { "sourceImage":"projects/debian-cloud/global/images/family/debian-9" }, "autoDelete":true } ] } }
Create a managed instance group in each zone with the
instanceGroupManagers.insert
method, replacingPROJECT_ID
with your project ID.POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/{zone}/instanceGroupManagers { "name": "l7-xlb-backend-example", "zone": "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/us-west1-a", "instanceTemplate": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/instanceTemplates/l7-xlb-backend-template", "baseInstanceName": "l7-xlb-backend-example", "targetSize": 2 }
Adding a named port to the instance group
For your instance group, define an HTTP service and map a port name to the relevant port. The load balancing service forwards traffic to the named port.
Console
- In the Google Cloud console, go to the Instance groups page.
- Click the name of your instance group (in this example
l7-xlb-backend-example
). - On the instance group's Overview page, click Edit .
- Click Specify port name mapping.
- Click Add item.
- For the port name, enter
http
. For the port number, enter80
. - Click Save.
gcloud
Use the gcloud beta compute instance-groups
set-named-ports
command.
gcloud beta compute instance-groups set-named-ports l7-xlb-backend-example \ --named-ports http:80 \ --zone us-west1-a
Reserving the load balancer's IP address
Cloud console
In the Cloud console, go to the Reserve a static address page.
Choose a Name for the new address.
For the Network Service Tier, select Standard.
Select IPv4. IPv6 addresses can only be global and can only be used with global load balancers.
Select Regional.
Select the region to create the address in.
Leave the Attach to option for set to None. After you create the load balancer, this IP address will be attached to the load balancer's forwarding rule.
Click Reserve to reserve the IP address.
gcloud
To reserve a static external IP address using
gcloud beta compute
, use thecompute addresses create
command.gcloud beta compute addresses create ADDRESS_NAME \ --region=us-west1 \ --network-tier=STANDARD
Replace the following:
ADDRESS_NAME
: the name you want to call this address.REGION
: the region where you want to reserve this address. This region should be the same region as the load balancer. All regional IP addresses areIPv4
.
Use the
compute addresses describe
command to view the result:gcloud beta compute addresses describe ADDRESS_NAME
API
To create a regional IPv4 address, call the
regional addresses.insert
method:
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/addresses
Your request body should contain the following:
{ "name": "ADDRESS_NAME" "networkTier": "STANDARD" "region": "us-west1" }
Replace the following:
ADDRESS_NAME
: the name for the addressREGION
: the name of the region for this requestPROJECT_ID
: the project ID for this request
Configuring the load balancer
This example shows you how to create the following regional external HTTP(S) load balancer resources:
- HTTP health check
- Backend service with a managed instance group as the backend
- A URL map
- Make sure to refer to a regional URL map if a region is defined for the target HTTP(S) proxy. A regional URL map routes requests to a regional backend service based on rules that you define for the host and path of an incoming URL. A regional URL map can be referenced by a regional target proxy rule in the same region only.
- SSL certificate (for HTTPS)
- Target proxy
- Forwarding rule
For the forwarding rule's IP address, use the backend-subnet
. If you
try to use the proxy-only
subnet, forwarding rule
creation fails.
Proxy availability
Sometimes Google Cloud regions don't have enough proxy capacity for a new load balancer. If this happens, the Cloud console provides a proxy availability warning message when you are creating your load balancer. To resolve this issue, you can do one of the following:
- Select a different region for your load balancer. This can be a practical option if you have backends in another region.
- Select a VPC network that already has an allocated proxy-only subnet.
Wait for the capacity issue to be resolved.
Cloud console
Select a load balancer type
- In the Cloud console, go to the Create a load balancer page.
Go to Create a load balancer - Under HTTP(S) Load Balancing, click Start configuration.
- In the Internet facing or internal only section, select From Internet to my VMs or serverless services. This setting means that the load balancer is an external HTTP(S) load balancer.
- In the Advanced traffic management section:
- Select HTTP(S) Load Balancer with Advanced Traffic Management.
- Select Regional HTTP(S) Load Balancer.
- Click Continue.
Create a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer
- For the Name of the load balancer, enter
regional-l7-xlb
. - For the Region, select
us-west1
. - For the Network, select
lb-network
.
Reserve a proxy-only subnet
For a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer, reserve a proxy-only subnet:
- Click Reserve a Subnet.
For the Name, enter
proxy-only-subnet
.For the IP address range, enter
10.129.0.0/23
.Click Add.
Configure the frontend
For HTTP:
- Click Frontend configuration.
- Set the Name to
l7-xlb-forwarding-rule
. - Set the Protocol to
HTTP
. - Set the Port to
80
. - Select the IP address that you created in Reserving the load balancer's IP address.
- Click Done.
For HTTPS:
If you are using HTTPS between the client and the load balancer, you need one or more SSL certificate resources to configure the proxy. For information about how to create SSL certificate resources, see SSL certificates. Google-managed certificates aren't currently supported with regional external HTTP(S) load balancers.
- Click Frontend configuration.
- In the Name field, enter
l7-xlb-forwarding-rule
. - In the Protocol field, select
HTTPS (includes HTTP/2)
. - Ensure that the Port is set to
443
. - Select the IP address that you created in Reserving the load balancer's IP address.
- In the Certificate list, do the following:
- If you already have a self-managed SSL certificate resource, select the primary SSL certificate.
- Click Create a new certificate.
- In the Name field, enter
l7-xlb-cert
. - In the appropriate fields upload your PEM-formatted files:
- Public key certificate
- Certificate chain
- Private key
- Click Create.
- In the Name field, enter
- Optional: To add certificates in addition to the primary SSL certificate:
- Click Add certificate.
- If you already have a certificate, select it from the Certificates list.
- Optional: Click Create a new certificate and follow the instructions as specified above.
- Click Done.
Configure the backend service
- Click Backend configuration.
- From the Create or select backend services menu, select Create a backend service.
- Set the Name of the backend service to
l7-xlb-backend-service
. - For the Protocol, select HTTP.
- For the Named Port, enter
http
. - Set the Backend type to Instance group.
- In the New backend section:
- Set the Instance group to
l7-xlb-backend-example
. - Set the Port numbers to
80
. - Set the Balancing mode to Utilization.
- Click Done.
- Set the Instance group to
- In the Health check section, click Create a health check.
- Set the Name to
l7-xlb-basic-check
. - Set the Protocol to
HTTP
. - Set the Port to
80
- Click Save.
- Set the Name to
- Click Create.
Configure the routing rules
- Click Routing rules.
- Under Mode, select Simple host and path rule.
- Ensure that the
l7-xlb-backend-service
is the only backend service for any unmatched host and any unmatched path.
Complete the configuration
Click Create.
gcloud
Define the HTTP health check with the
gcloud beta compute health-checks create http
command.gcloud beta compute health-checks create http l7-xlb-basic-check \ --region=us-west1 \ --request-path='/' \ --use-serving-port
Define the backend service with the
gcloud beta compute backend-services create
command.gcloud beta compute backend-services create l7-xlb-backend-service \ --load-balancing-scheme=EXTERNAL_MANAGED \ --protocol=HTTP \ --port-name=http \ --health-checks=l7-xlb-basic-check \ --health-checks-region=us-west1 \ --region=us-west1
Add backends to the backend service with the
gcloud beta compute backend-services add-backend
command.gcloud beta compute backend-services add-backend l7-xlb-backend-service \ --balancing-mode=UTILIZATION \ --instance-group=l7-xlb-backend-example \ --instance-group-zone=us-west1-a \ --region=us-west1
Create the URL map with the
gcloud beta compute url-maps create
command.gcloud beta compute url-maps create regional-l7-xlb-map \ --default-service=l7-xlb-backend-service \ --region=us-west1
Create the target proxy.
For HTTP:
For an HTTP load balancer, create the target proxy with the
gcloud beta compute target-http-proxies create
command.gcloud beta compute target-http-proxies create l7-xlb-proxy \ --url-map=regional-l7-xlb-map \ --url-map-region=us-west1 \ --region=us-west1
For HTTPS:
For information about how to create SSL certificate resources, see SSL certificates. Google-managed certificates aren't supported with regional external HTTP(S) load balancers.
Assign your filepaths to variable names.
export LB_CERT=path to PEM-formatted file
export LB_PRIVATE_KEY=path to PEM-formatted file
Create a regional SSL certificate using the
gcloud beta compute ssl-certificates create
command.gcloud beta compute ssl-certificates create l7-xlb-cert \ --certificate=$LB_CERT \ --private-key=$LB_PRIVATE_KEY \ --region=us-west1
Use the regional SSL certificate to create a target proxy with the
gcloud beta compute target-https-proxies create
command.gcloud beta compute target-https-proxies create l7-xlb-proxy \ --url-map=regional-l7-xlb-map \ --region=us-west1 \ --ssl-certificates=l7-xlb-cert
Create the forwarding rule.
For HTTP:
Use the
gcloud beta compute forwarding-rules create
command with the correct flags.gcloud beta compute forwarding-rules create l7-xlb-forwarding-rule \ --load-balancing-scheme=EXTERNAL_MANAGED \ --network-tier=STANDARD \ --network=lb-network \ --address=ADDRESS_NAME \ --ports=80 \ --region=us-west1 \ --target-http-proxy=l7-xlb-proxy \ --target-http-proxy-region=us-west1
For HTTPS:
Create the forwarding rule with the
gcloud beta compute forwarding-rules create
command with the correct flags.gcloud beta compute forwarding-rules create l7-xlb-forwarding-rule \ --load-balancing-scheme=EXTERNAL_MANAGED \ --network-tier=STANDARD \ --network=lb-network \ --address=ADDRESS_NAME \ --ports=443 \ --region=us-west1 \ --target-https-proxy=l7-xlb-proxy \ --target-https-proxy-region=us-west1
API
Create the health check by making a POST
request to the
regionHealthChecks.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID
with your project ID.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/<var>PROJECT_ID</var>/regions/{region}/healthChecks
{
"name": "l7-xlb-basic-check",
"type": "HTTP",
"httpHealthCheck": {
"portSpecification": "USE_SERVING_PORT"
}
}
Create the regional backend service by making a POST
request to the
regionBackendServices.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID
with your project ID.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/<var>PROJECT_ID</var>/regions/us-west1/backendServices
{
"name": "l7-xlb-backend-service",
"backends": [
{
"group": "projects/<var>PROJECT_ID</var>/zones/us-west1-a/instanceGroups/l7-xlb-backend-example",
"balancingMode": "UTILIZATION"
}
],
"healthChecks": [
"projects/<var>PROJECT_ID</var>/regions/us-west1/healthChecks/l7-xlb-basic-check"
],
"loadBalancingScheme": "EXTERNAL_MANAGED"
}
Create the URL map by making a POST
request to the
regionUrlMaps.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID
with your project ID.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/<var>PROJECT_ID</var>/regions/us-west1/urlMaps
{
"name": "regional-l7-xlb-map",
"defaultService": "projects/<var>PROJECT_ID</var>/regions/us-west1/backendServices/l7-xlb-backend-service"
}
Create the target HTTP proxy by making a POST
request to the
regionTargetHttpProxies.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID
with your project ID.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/targetHttpProxy { "name": "l7-xlb-proxy", "urlMap": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/urlMaps/regional-l7-xlb-map", "region": "us-west1" }
Create the forwarding rule by making a POST
request to the
forwardingRules.insert
method, replacing PROJECT_ID
with your project ID.
POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/forwardingRules { "name": "l7-xlb-forwarding-rule", "IPAddress": "10.1.2.99", "IPProtocol": "TCP", "portRange": "80-80", "target": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/targetHttpProxies/l7-xlb-proxy", "loadBalancingScheme": "EXTERNAL_MANAGED", "network": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/lb-network", "networkTier": "STANDARD", }
Connect your domain to your load balancer
After the load balancer is created, note the IP address that is associated with
the load balancer: for example, 30.90.80.100
. To point your domain to your
load balancer, create an A
record using your domain registration service. If
you added multiple domains to your SSL certificate, you must add an A
record
for each one, all pointing to the load balancer's IP address. For example, to
create A
records for www.example.com
and example.com
:
NAME TYPE DATA www A 30.90.80.100 @ A 30.90.80.100
If you are using Google Domains, see the Google Domains Help page for more information.
Testing traffic sent to your instances
Now that the load balancing service is running, you can send traffic to the forwarding rule and watch the traffic be dispersed to different instances.
Cloud console
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Load balancing page.
- Select the load balancer that you just created.
- In the Backend section, confirm that the VMs are healthy. The
Healthy column should be populated, indicating that both VMs
are healthy (
2/2
). If you see otherwise, first try reloading the page. It can take a few moments for the Cloud console to indicate that the VMs are healthy. If the backends do not appear healthy after a few minutes, review the firewall configuration and the network tag assigned to your backend VMs. - After the Cloud console shows that the backend instances are
healthy, you can test your load balancer using a web browser by going to
https://IP_ADDRESS
(orhttp://IP_ADDRESS
). ReplaceIP_ADDRESS
with the load balancer's IP address. - If you used a self-signed certificate for testing HTTPS, your browser displays a warning. You must explicitly instruct your browser to accept a self-signed certificate.
- Your browser should render a page with content showing the name of the
instance that served the page, along with its zone (for example,
Page served from: lb-backend-example-xxxx
). If your browser doesn't render this page, review the configuration settings in this guide.
gcloud
Note the IPv4 address that was reserved:
gcloud beta compute addresses describe ADDRESS_NAME \ --format="get(address)" \ --region="us-west1"
You can test your load balancer using a web browser by going to
https://IP_ADDRESS
(or
http://IP_ADDRESS
). Replace
IP_ADDRESS
with the
load balancer's IP address.
If you used a self-signed certificate for testing HTTPS, your browser displays a warning. You must explicitly instruct your browser to accept a self-signed certificate.
Your browser should render a page with minimal information about the backend instance. If your browser doesn't render this page, review the configuration settings in this guide.
Additional configuration options
This section expands on the configuration example to provide alternative and additional configuration options. All of the tasks are optional. You can perform them in any order.
Enabling session affinity
These procedures show you how to update a backend service for the example regional external HTTP(S) load balancer so that the backend service uses generated cookie affinity, header field affinity, or HTTP cookie affinity.
When generated cookie affinity is enabled, the load balancer issues a cookie
on the first request. For each subsequent request with the same cookie, the load
balancer directs the request to the same backend VM or endpoint. For
regional external HTTP(S) load balancers, the cookie is named GCILB
.
When header field affinity is enabled, the load balancer routes requests to
backend VMs or endpoints in a NEG based on the value of the HTTP header named
in the --custom-request-header
flag. Header field affinity is only valid if
the load balancing locality policy is either RING_HASH
or MAGLEV
and the
backend service's consistent hash specifies the name of the HTTP header.
When HTTP cookie affinity is enabled, the load balancer routes requests to
backend VMs or endpoints in a NEG, based on an HTTP cookie named in the
HTTP_COOKIE
flag with the optional --affinity-cookie-ttl
flag. If the client
does not provide the cookie in its HTTP request, the proxy generates
the cookie and returns it to the client in a Set-Cookie
header. HTTP cookie
affinity is only valid if the load balancing locality policy is either
RING_HASH
or MAGLEV
and the backend service's consistent hash specifies the
HTTP cookie.
Cloud console
To enable or change session affinity for a backend service:
- Go to the Load balancing page in the Google Cloud console.
Go to Load balancing - Select the load balancer that you just created.
- Click Backends.
- Click l7-xlb-backend-service (the name of the backend service you created for this example) and click Edit.
- On the Backend service details page, click Advanced configuration.
- Under Session affinity, select the type of session affinity you want from the menu.
- Click Update.
gcloud
Use the following gcloud commands to update the l7-xlb-backend-service
backend service to different types of session affinity:
gcloud beta compute backend-services update l7-xlb-backend-service \ --session-affinity=[GENERATED_COOKIE | HEADER_FIELD | HTTP_COOKIE | CLIENT_IP] --region=us-west1
API
To set session affinity, make a PATCH
request to the
regionBackendServices/patch
method.
PATCH https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/[PROJECT_ID]/regions/us-west1/regionBackendServices/l7-xlb-backend-service
{
"sessionAffinity": ["GENERATED_COOKIE" | "HEADER_FIELD" | "HTTP_COOKIE" | "CLIENT_IP" ]
}
What's next
To learn about traffic management features, see Traffic management overview for regional external HTTP(S) load balancers.
To manage the proxy-only subnet resource required by a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer, see Proxy-only subnets.
To learn how to update your regional external HTTP(S) load balancer's SSL certificate, see Using self-managed SSL certificates.