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Cloud Platforms > Google Cloud Platform (GCP) > Cloud Load Balancing

Cloud Load Balancing

Author: Venkata Sudhakar

Google Cloud Load Balancing is a fully distributed, software-defined load balancing solution that distributes user traffic across multiple instances of your application. It provides single anycast IP, auto-scaling, and global load balancing.

Load Balancer Types:

1. Global External HTTP(S) LB - Layer 7, global, supports URL-based routing and Cloud CDN.

2. Regional External HTTP(S) LB - Regional Layer 7 for lower latency within a region.

3. External TCP/UDP Network LB - Layer 4, regional, for non-HTTP traffic.

4. Internal HTTP(S) LB - Layer 7 for internal microservices communication.

5. Internal TCP/UDP LB - Layer 4 for internal non-HTTP traffic.

The below example shows how to set up a Global HTTP Load Balancer using gcloud.

# Create instance group as backend
gcloud compute instance-groups managed create my-instance-group \
  --base-instance-name=my-app \
  --template=my-instance-template \
  --size=3 \
  --zone=us-central1-a

# Create health check
gcloud compute health-checks create http my-health-check \
  --port=8080 --request-path=/health

# Create backend service
gcloud compute backend-services create my-backend-service \
  --protocol=HTTP --health-checks=my-health-check --global

# Add instance group to backend
gcloud compute backend-services add-backend my-backend-service \
  --instance-group=my-instance-group \
  --instance-group-zone=us-central1-a --global

# Create URL map
gcloud compute url-maps create my-url-map \
  --default-service=my-backend-service

# Create HTTP proxy
gcloud compute target-http-proxies create my-http-proxy \
  --url-map=my-url-map

# Create forwarding rule (global IP)
gcloud compute forwarding-rules create my-forwarding-rule \
  --address-type=EXTERNAL \
  --global \
  --target-http-proxy=my-http-proxy \
  --ports=80

It gives the following output,

Created backend service [my-backend-service].
Created url-map [my-url-map].
Created forwarding-rule [my-forwarding-rule].
External IP: 34.120.100.50

Key LB Features:

Single anycast IP - One global IP routes users to the nearest healthy backend automatically.

Auto-scaling - Works with managed instance groups to scale backends up/down based on load.

SSL termination - Handles HTTPS/SSL termination at the load balancer level.

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