A RetroSearch Logo

Home - News ( United States | United Kingdom | Italy | Germany ) - Football scores

Search Query:

Showing content from https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/l7-internal/setting-up-l7-internal below:

Set up a regional internal Application Load Balancer with VM instance group backends | Load Balancing

This document provides instructions for configuring a regional internal Application Load Balancer for your services that run on Compute Engine VMs.

To configure load balancing for your services running in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Pods, see Container-native load balancing through standalone NEGs and the Attaching an internal Application Load Balancer to standalone NEGs section.

To configure load balancing to access Google APIs and services using Private Service Connect, see Access regional Google APIs through backends.

The setup for internal Application Load Balancers has two parts:

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.

For more information, see the following guides:

Setup overview

You can configure an internal Application Load Balancer as described in the following high-level configuration flow. The numbered steps refer to the numbers in the diagram.

Internal Application Load Balancer numbered components (click to enlarge).

As shown in the diagram, this example creates an internal Application Load Balancer in a VPC network in region us-west1, with one backend service and two backend groups.

The diagram shows the following:

  1. A VPC network with two subnets:

  2. Two firewall rules:

  3. Backend Compute Engine VM instances.

  4. Managed or unmanaged instance groups for Compute Engine VM deployments.

    In each zone, you can have a combination of backend group types based on the requirements of your deployment.

    Note: This setup shows you how to load balance requests to only VM instance group backends. To learn how to load balance requests to GKE Pods, see GKE Ingress for Application Load Balancers.
  5. A regional health check that reports the readiness of your backends.

  6. A regional backend service that monitors the usage and health of backends.

  7. 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.

  8. A regional target HTTP or HTTPS proxy that 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.

  9. A forwarding rule that has the internal IP address of your load balancer, to forward each incoming request to the target proxy.

    The internal IP address associated with the forwarding rule can come from any subnet in the same network and region. Note the following conditions:

    The example on this page uses a reserved internal IP address for the regional internal Application Load Balancer's forwarding rule, rather than allowing an ephemeral internal IP address to be allocated. As a best practice, we recommend reserving IP addresses for forwarding rules.

Configure 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. An internal Application 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:

To demonstrate global access, this example also creates a second test client VM in a different region and subnet:

Note: You can change the name of the network, the region, and the parameters for the subnets; however, subsequent steps in this guide use the network, region, and subnet parameters as outlined here. Configure the network and subnets Console
  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VPC networks page.

    Go to VPC networks

  2. Click Create VPC network.

  3. For Name, enter lb-network.

  4. In the Subnets section, set the Subnet creation mode to Custom.

  5. Create a subnet for the load balancer's backends. In the New subnet section, enter the following information:

  6. Click Done.

  7. Click Add subnet.

  8. Create a subnet to demonstrate global access. In the New subnet section, enter the following information:

  9. Click Done.

  10. Click Create.

gcloud
  1. Create the custom VPC network with the gcloud compute networks create command:

    gcloud compute networks create lb-network --subnet-mode=custom
    
  2. Create a subnet in the lb-network network in the us-west1 region with the gcloud compute networks subnets create command:

    gcloud compute networks subnets create backend-subnet \
        --network=lb-network \
        --range=10.1.2.0/24 \
        --region=us-west1
    
  3. Create a subnet in the lb-network network in the europe-west1 region with the gcloud compute networks subnets create command:

    gcloud compute networks subnets create europe-subnet \
        --network=lb-network \
        --range=10.3.4.0/24 \
        --region=europe-west1
    
API

Make a POST request to the networks.insert method. Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks

{
 "routingConfig": {
   "routingMode": "REGIONAL"
 },
 "name": "lb-network",
 "autoCreateSubnetworks": false
}

Make a POST request to the subnetworks.insert method. Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/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",
}

Make a POST request to the subnetworks.insert method. Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/europe-west1/subnetworks

{
 "name": "europe-subnet",
 "network": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/lb-network",
 "ipCidrRange": "10.3.4.0/24",
 "region": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/europe-west1",
}
Configure the proxy-only subnet

This proxy-only subnet is for all regional Envoy-based load balancers in the us-west1 region of the lb-network.

Important: Don't try to assign addresses from the proxy-only subnet to your load balancer's forwarding rule or backends. You assign the forwarding rule's IP address and the backend instance IP addresses from a different subnet range (or ranges), not this one. Google Cloud reserves this subnet range for Google Cloud-managed proxies. Console

If you're using the Google Cloud console, you can wait and create the proxy-only subnet later on the Load balancing page.

If you want to create the proxy-only subnet now, use the following steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VPC networks page.

    Go to VPC networks

  2. Click the name of the VPC network: lb-network.

  3. Click Add subnet.

  4. For Name, enter proxy-only-subnet.

  5. For Region, select us-west1.

  6. Set Purpose to Regional Managed Proxy.

  7. For IP address range, enter 10.129.0.0/23.

  8. Click Add.

gcloud

Create the proxy-only subnet with the gcloud compute networks subnets create command.

gcloud 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/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"
}
Configure firewall rules

This example uses the following firewall rules:

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 Create a managed VM instance group backend.

Console
  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewall policies page.

    Go to Firewall policies

  2. Click Create firewall rule to create the rule to allow incoming SSH connections:

  3. Click Create.

  4. Click Create firewall rule a second time to create the rule to allow Google Cloud health checks:

  5. Click Create.

  6. Click Create firewall rule a third time to create the rule to allow the load balancer's proxy servers to connect the backends:

  7. Click Create.

gcloud
  1. Create the fw-allow-ssh firewall rule to allow SSH connectivity to VMs with the network tag allow-ssh. When you omit source-ranges, Google Cloud interprets the rule to mean any source.

    gcloud compute firewall-rules create fw-allow-ssh \
        --network=lb-network \
        --action=allow \
        --direction=ingress \
        --target-tags=allow-ssh \
        --rules=tcp:22
    
  2. 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 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
    
  3. Create the fw-allow-proxies rule to allow the internal Application Load Balancer's proxies to connect to your backends. Set source-ranges to the allocated ranges of your proxy-only subnet—for example, 10.129.0.0/23.

    gcloud 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/v1/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.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/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/v1/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"
}
Reserve the load balancer's IP address

By default, one IP address is used for each forwarding rule. You can reserve a shared IP address, which lets you use the same IP address with multiple forwarding rules. However, if you want to publish the load balancer by using Private Service Connect, don't use a shared IP address for the 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.

Console

You can reserve a standalone internal IP address using the Google Cloud console.

  1. Go to the VPC networks page.

    Go to VPC networks

  2. Click the network that was used to configure hybrid connectivity between the environments.
  3. Click Static internal IP addresses, and then click Reserve static address.
  4. For Name, enter l7-ilb-ip-address.
  5. For the Subnet, select backend-subnet.
  6. If you want to specify which IP address to reserve, under Static IP address, select Let me choose, and then fill in a Custom IP address. Otherwise, the system automatically assigns an IP address in the subnet for you.
  7. If you want to use this IP address with multiple forwarding rules, under Purpose, choose Shared.
  8. Click Reserve to finish the process.
gcloud
  1. Using the gcloud CLI, run the gcloud compute addresses create command:

    gcloud compute addresses create l7-ilb-ip-address \
        --region=us-west1 \
        --subnet=backend-subnet
    

    If you want to use the same IP address with multiple forwarding rules, specify --purpose=SHARED_LOADBALANCER_VIP.

  2. Use the gcloud compute addresses describe command to view the allocated IP address:

    gcloud compute addresses describe l7-ilb-ip-address \
        --region=us-west1
    
Create a managed VM instance group backend

This section shows how to create an instance group template and a managed instance group. The managed instance group provides VM instances running the backend servers of an example regional internal Application Load Balancer. For your instance group, you can define an HTTP service and map a port name to the relevant port. The backend service of the load balancer forwards traffic to the named ports. Traffic from clients is load balanced to backend servers. For demonstration purposes, backends serve their own hostnames.

Console
  1. Create an instance template. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Instance templates page.

    Go to Instance templates

    1. Click Create instance template.
    2. For Name, enter l7-ilb-backend-template.
    3. Ensure that the Boot disk is set to a Debian image, such as Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm). These instructions use commands that are only available on Debian, such as apt-get.
    4. Click Advanced options.
    5. Click Networking and configure the following fields:
      1. For Network tags, enter allow-ssh and load-balanced-backend.
      2. For Network interfaces, select the following:
        • Network: lb-network
        • Subnet: backend-subnet
    6. Click Management. Enter the following script into the Startup script field.

      #! /bin/bash
      apt-get update
      apt-get install apache2 -y
      a2ensite default-ssl
      a2enmod ssl
      vm_hostname="$(curl -H "Metadata-Flavor:Google" \
      http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/name)"
      echo "Page served from: $vm_hostname" | \
      tee /var/www/html/index.html
      systemctl restart apache2
      
    7. Click Create.

  2. Create a managed instance group. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Instance groups page.

    Go to Instance groups

    1. Click Create instance group.
    2. Select New managed instance group (stateless). For more information, see Stateful managed instance groups.
    3. For Name, enter l7-ilb-backend-example.
    4. For Location, select Single zone.
    5. For Region, select us-west1.
    6. For Zone, select us-west1-a.
    7. For Instance template, select l7-ilb-backend-template.
    8. Specify the number of instances that you want to create in the group.

      For this example, specify the following options under Autoscaling:

      • For Autoscaling mode, select Off:do not autoscale.
      • For Maximum number of instances, enter 2.

      Optionally, in the Autoscaling section of the UI, you can configure the instance group to automatically add or remove instances based on instance CPU usage.

    9. Click Create.

gcloud

The gcloud instructions in this guide assume that you are using Cloud Shell or another environment with bash installed.

  1. Create a VM instance template with HTTP server with the gcloud compute instance-templates create command.

     gcloud compute instance-templates create l7-ilb-backend-template \
         --region=us-west1 \
         --network=lb-network \
         --subnet=backend-subnet \
         --tags=allow-ssh,load-balanced-backend \
         --image-family=debian-12 \
         --image-project=debian-cloud \
         --metadata=startup-script='#! /bin/bash
         apt-get update
         apt-get install apache2 -y
         a2ensite default-ssl
         a2enmod ssl
         vm_hostname="$(curl -H "Metadata-Flavor:Google" \
         http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/name)"
         echo "Page served from: $vm_hostname" | \
         tee /var/www/html/index.html
         systemctl restart apache2'
    
  2. Create a managed instance group in the zone with the gcloud compute instance-groups managed create command.

      gcloud compute instance-groups managed create l7-ilb-backend-example \
          --zone=us-west1-a \
          --size=2 \
          --template=l7-ilb-backend-template
    
API

Create the instance template with the instanceTemplates.insert method, replacing PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/global/instanceTemplates
{
  "name":"l7-ilb-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\napt-get update\napt-get install
            apache2 -y\na2ensite default-ssl\na2enmod ssl\n
            vm_hostname=\"$(curl -H \"Metadata-Flavor:Google\"
            \\\nhttp://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/name)\"\n
            echo \"Page served from: $vm_hostname\" | \\\ntee
            /var/www/html/index.html\nsystemctl 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-12"
         },
         "autoDelete":true
       }
     ]
  }
}

Create a managed instance group in each zone with the instanceGroupManagers.insert method, replacing PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/{zone}/instanceGroupManagers
{
  "name": "l7-ilb-backend-example",
  "zone": "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/us-west1-a",
  "instanceTemplate": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/instanceTemplates/l7-ilb-backend-template",
  "baseInstanceName": "l7-ilb-backend-example",
  "targetSize": 2
}
Configure the load balancer

This example shows you how to create the following regional internal Application Load Balancer resources:

Proxy availability

Sometimes Google Cloud regions don't have enough proxy capacity for a new load balancer. If this happens, the Google 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:

Console Select the load balancer type
  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Load balancing page.

    Go to Load balancing

  2. Click Create load balancer.
  3. For Type of load balancer, select Application Load Balancer (HTTP/HTTPS) and click Next.
  4. For Public facing or internal, select Internal and click Next.
  5. For Cross-region or single region deployment, select Best for regional workloads and click Next.
  6. Click Configure.
Basic configuration
  1. For the Name of the load balancer, enter l7-ilb-map.
  2. For Region, select us-west1.
  3. For Network, select lb-network.
Reserve a proxy-only subnet Note: If you've already reserved a proxy-only subnet, as instructed in the preparation setup, the Reserve a Subnet button isn't displayed, so you need to skip this section and continue with the steps to configure the backend service.

Reserve a proxy-only subnet:

  1. Click Reserve a Subnet.
  2. For Name, enter proxy-only-subnet.
  3. For IP address range, enter 10.129.0.0/23.
  4. Click Add.
Configure the backend service
  1. Click Backend configuration.
  2. From the Create or select backend services menu, select Create a backend service.
  3. Set the name of the backend service to l7-ilb-backend-service.
  4. Set Backend type to Instance group.
  5. In the New backend section:
    1. Set Instance group to l7-ilb-backend-example.
    2. Set Port numbers to 80.
    3. Set Balancing mode to Utilization.
    4. Click Done.
  6. From the Health check list, click Create a health check with the following parameters:
    1. Name: l7-ilb-basic-check
    2. Protocol: HTTP
    3. Port: 80
    4. Click Save.
  7. Optional: Configure a default backend security policy. The default security policy throttles traffic over a user-configured threshold. For more information about default security policies, see the Rate limiting overview.

    1. To opt out of the Cloud Armor default security policy, select None in the Cloud Armor backend security policy list.
    2. To configure the Cloud Armor default security policy, select Default security policy in the Cloud Armor backend security policy list.
    3. In the Policy name field, accept the automatically generated name or enter a name for your security policy.
    4. In the Request count field, accept the default request count or enter an integer between 1 and 10,000.
    5. In the Interval field, select an interval.
    6. In the Enforce on key field, choose one of the following values: All, IP address, or X-Forwarded-For IP address. For more information about these options, see Identifying clients for rate limiting.
  8. Click Create.
Configure the URL map
  1. Click Host and path rules.

  2. For Mode, select Simple host and path rule.

  3. Ensure that the l7-ilb-backend-service is the only backend service for any unmatched host and any unmatched path.

For information about traffic management, see Set up traffic management for internal Application Load Balancers.

Configure the frontend

For HTTP:

  1. Click Frontend configuration.
  2. Set the name of the forwarding rule to l7-ilb-forwarding-rule.
  3. Set Protocol to HTTP.
  4. Set Subnetwork to backend-subnet.
  5. Set the Port to 80.
  6. From the IP address list, select l7-ilb-ip-address.
  7. Click Done.

For HTTPS:

  1. Click Frontend configuration.
  2. Set the name of the forwarding rule to l7-ilb-forwarding-rule.
  3. Set Protocol to HTTPS (includes HTTP/2).
  4. Set Subnetwork to backend-subnet.
  5. Ensure that the Port is set to 443, to allow HTTPS traffic.
  6. From the IP address list, select l7-ilb-ip-address.
  7. Click the Certificate list.
    1. If you already have a self-managed SSL certificate resource you want to use as the primary SSL certificate, select it from the list.
    2. Otherwise, select Create a new certificate.
      1. Set the name of the certificate to l7-ilb-cert.
      2. In the appropriate fields upload your PEM-formatted files:
        • Public key certificate
        • Certificate chain
        • Private key
      3. Click Create.
  8. To add certificate resources in addition to the primary SSL certificate resource:
    1. Click Add certificate.
    2. Select a certificate from the Certificates list, or click Create a new certificate and follow the instructions.
  9. Select an SSL policy from the SSL policy list. Optionally, to create an SSL policy, do the following:

    1. In the SSL policy list, select Create a policy.
    2. Enter a name for the SSL policy.
    3. Select a minimum TLS version. The default value is TLS 1.0.
    4. Select one of the pre-configured Google-managed profiles or select a Custom profile that lets you select SSL features individually. The Enabled features and Disabled features are displayed.
    5. Click Save.

    If you have not created any SSL policies, a default Google Cloud SSL policy is applied.

  10. Click Done.

Review the configuration
  1. Click Review and finalize.
  2. Review your load balancer configuration settings.
  3. Optional: Click Equivalent code to view the REST API request that will be used to create the load balancer.
  4. Click Create.
gcloud
  1. Define the HTTP health check with the gcloud compute health-checks create http command.

     gcloud compute health-checks create http l7-ilb-basic-check \
         --region=us-west1 \
         --use-serving-port
    
  2. Define the backend service with the gcloud compute backend-services create command.

    gcloud compute backend-services create l7-ilb-backend-service \
        --load-balancing-scheme=INTERNAL_MANAGED \
        --protocol=HTTP \
        --health-checks=l7-ilb-basic-check \
        --health-checks-region=us-west1 \
        --region=us-west1
    
  3. Add backends to the backend service with the gcloud compute backend-services add-backend command.

    gcloud compute backend-services add-backend l7-ilb-backend-service \
        --balancing-mode=UTILIZATION \
        --instance-group=l7-ilb-backend-example \
        --instance-group-zone=us-west1-a \
        --region=us-west1
    
  4. Create the URL map with the gcloud compute url-maps create command.

    gcloud compute url-maps create l7-ilb-map \
        --default-service=l7-ilb-backend-service \
        --region=us-west1
    
  5. Create the target proxy.

    For HTTP:

    For an internal HTTP load balancer, create the target proxy with the gcloud compute target-http-proxies create command.

    gcloud compute target-http-proxies create l7-ilb-proxy \
        --url-map=l7-ilb-map \
        --url-map-region=us-west1 \
        --region=us-west1
    

    For HTTPS:

    You can create either Compute Engine or Certificate Manager certificates. Use any of the following methods to create certificates using Certificate Manager:

    After you create certificates, attach the certificate directly to the target proxy.

    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 compute ssl-certificates create command.

    gcloud compute ssl-certificates create l7-ilb-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 compute target-https-proxies create command.

    gcloud compute target-https-proxies create l7-ilb-proxy \
        --url-map=l7-ilb-map \
        --region=us-west1 \
        --ssl-certificates=l7-ilb-cert
    
  6. Create the forwarding rule.

    For custom networks, you must reference the subnet in the forwarding rule. Note that this is the VM subnet, not the proxy subnet.

    For HTTP:

    Use the gcloud compute forwarding-rules create command with the correct flags.

    gcloud compute forwarding-rules create l7-ilb-forwarding-rule \
        --load-balancing-scheme=INTERNAL_MANAGED \
        --network=lb-network \
        --subnet=backend-subnet \
        --address=l7-ilb-ip-address \
        --ports=80 \
        --region=us-west1 \
        --target-http-proxy=l7-ilb-proxy \
        --target-http-proxy-region=us-west1
    

    For HTTPS:

    Create the forwarding rule with the gcloud compute forwarding-rules create command with the correct flags.

    gcloud compute forwarding-rules create l7-ilb-forwarding-rule \
        --load-balancing-scheme=INTERNAL_MANAGED \
        --network=lb-network \
        --subnet=backend-subnet \
        --address=l7-ilb-ip-address \
        --ports=443 \
        --region=us-west1 \
        --target-https-proxy=l7-ilb-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/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/{region}/healthChecks

{
"name": "l7-ilb-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/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/backendServices

{
"name": "l7-ilb-backend-service",
"backends": [
  {
    "group": "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/us-west1-a/instanceGroups/l7-ilb-backend-example",
    "balancingMode": "UTILIZATION"
  }
],
"healthChecks": [
  "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/healthChecks/l7-ilb-basic-check"
],
"loadBalancingScheme": "INTERNAL_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/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/urlMaps

{
"name": "l7-ilb-map",
"defaultService": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/backendServices/l7-ilb-backend-service"
}

For HTTP:

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/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/targetHttpProxy

{
"name": "l7-ilb-proxy",
"urlMap": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/urlMaps/l7-ilb-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/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/forwardingRules

{
"name": "l7-ilb-forwarding-rule",
"IPAddress": "IP_ADDRESS",
"IPProtocol": "TCP",
"portRange": "80-80",
"target": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/targetHttpProxies/l7-ilb-proxy",
"loadBalancingScheme": "INTERNAL_MANAGED",
"subnetwork": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/subnetworks/backend-subnet",
"network": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/lb-network",
"networkTier": "PREMIUM"
}

For HTTPS:

You can create either Compute Engine or Certificate Manager certificates. Use any of the following methods to create certificates using Certificate Manager:

After you create certificates, attach the certificate directly to the target proxy.

Read the certificate and private key files, and then create the SSL certificate. The following example shows how to do this with Python.

Create the target HTTPS proxy by making a POST request to the regionTargetHttpsProxies.insert method, replacing PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/regionTargetHttpsProxy

{
"name": "l7-ilb-proxy",
"urlMap": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/urlMaps/l7-ilb-map",
"sslCertificates": /projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/sslCertificates/SSL_CERT_NAME
}

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/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/forwardingRules

{
"name": "l7-ilb-forwarding-rule",
"IPAddress": "IP_ADDRESS",
"IPProtocol": "TCP",
"portRange": "80-80",
"target": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/targetHttpsProxies/l7-ilb-proxy",
"loadBalancingScheme": "INTERNAL_MANAGED",
"subnetwork": "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/subnetworks/backend-subnet",
"network": "projects/PROJECT_ID/global/networks/lb-network",
"networkTier": "PREMIUM",
}
Test the load balancer

To test the load balancer, create a client VM. Then, establish an SSH session with the VM and send traffic from the VM to the load balancer.

Create a VM instance to test connectivity Console
  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  2. Click Create instance.

  3. Set Name to l7-ilb-client-us-west1-a.

  4. Set Zone to us-west1-a.

  5. Click Advanced options.

  6. Click Networking and configure the following fields:

    1. For Network tags, enter allow-ssh.
    2. For Network interfaces, select the following:
      1. Network: lb-network
      2. Subnet: backend-subnet
  7. Click Create.

gcloud
  gcloud compute instances create l7-ilb-client-us-west1-a \
      --image-family=debian-12 \
      --image-project=debian-cloud \
      --network=lb-network \
      --subnet=backend-subnet \
      --zone=us-west1-a \
      --tags=allow-ssh
Send traffic to the load balancer

Sign in to the instance that you just created and test that HTTP(S) services on the backends are reachable by using the regional internal Application Load Balancer's forwarding rule IP address, and traffic is being load balanced across the backend instances.

Connect using SSH to each client instance
gcloud compute ssh l7-ilb-client-us-west1-a \
    --zone=us-west1-a
Get the load balancer's IP address

Use the gcloud compute addresses describe command to view the allocated IP address:

gcloud compute addresses describe l7-ilb-ip-address \
    --region=us-west1
Verify that the IP address is serving its hostname

Replace IP_ADDRESS with the load balancer's IP address.

For HTTP testing:

curl IP_ADDRESS

For HTTPS testing:

curl -k -s 'https://DOMAIN_NAME:443' --connect-to DOMAIN_NAME:443:IP_ADDRESS:443

Replace DOMAIN_NAME with your application domain name, for example, test.example.com.

The -k flag causes curl to skip certificate validation.

Run 100 requests and confirm that they are load balanced

Replace IP_ADDRESS with the load balancer's IP address.

For HTTP:

{
  RESULTS=
  for i in {1..100}
  do
      RESULTS="$RESULTS:$(curl --silent IP_ADDRESS)"
  done
  echo "***"
  echo "*** Results of load-balancing: "
  echo "***"
  echo "$RESULTS" | tr ':' '\n' | grep -Ev "^$" | sort | uniq -c
  echo
}

For HTTPS:

Replace DOMAIN_NAME with your application domain name, for example, test.example.com.

{
  RESULTS=
  for i in {1..100}
  do
      RESULTS="$RESULTS:$(curl -k -s 'https://DOMAIN_NAME:443' --connect-to DOMAIN_NAME:443:IP_ADDRESS:443)"
  done
  echo "***"
  echo "*** Results of load-balancing: "
  echo "***"
  echo "$RESULTS" | tr ':' '\n' | grep -Ev "^$" | sort | uniq -c
  echo
}
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.

Enable global access

You can enable global access for Regional internal Application Load Balancer and Regional internal proxy Network Load Balancer to make them accessible to clients in all regions. The backends of your example load balancer must still be located in one region (us-west1).

Regional internal Application Load Balancer with global access (click to enlarge).

You can't modify an existing regional forwarding rule to enable global access. You must create a new forwarding rule for this purpose and delete the previous forwarding rule. Additionally, after a forwarding rule is created with global access enabled, it cannot be modified. To disable global access, you must create a new regional access forwarding rule and delete the previous global access forwarding rule.

To configure global access, make the following configuration changes.

Console

Create a new forwarding rule for the load balancer:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Load balancing page.

    Go to Load balancing

  2. In the Name column, click your load balancer.

  3. Click Frontend configuration.

  4. Click Add frontend IP and port.

  5. Enter the name and subnet details for the new forwarding rule.

  6. For Subnetwork, select backend-subnet.

  7. For IP address, you can either select the same IP address as an existing forwarding rule, reserve a new IP address, or use an ephemeral IP address. Sharing the same IP address across multiple forwarding rules is only possible if you set the IP address --purpose flag to SHARED_LOADBALANCER_VIP while creating the IP address.

  8. For Port number, enter 110.

  9. For Global access, select Enable.

  10. Click Done.

  11. Click Update.

gcloud
  1. Create a new forwarding rule for the load balancer with the --allow-global-access flag.

    For HTTP:

    gcloud compute forwarding-rules create l7-ilb-forwarding-rule-global-access \
        --load-balancing-scheme=INTERNAL_MANAGED \
        --network=lb-network \
        --subnet=backend-subnet \
        --address=10.1.2.99 \
        --ports=80 \
        --region=us-west1 \
        --target-http-proxy=l7-ilb-proxy \
        --target-http-proxy-region=us-west1 \
        --allow-global-access
    

    For HTTPS:

    gcloud compute forwarding-rules create l7-ilb-forwarding-rule-global-access \
        --load-balancing-scheme=INTERNAL_MANAGED \
        --network=lb-network \
        --subnet=backend-subnet \
        --address=10.1.2.99 \
        --ports=443 \
        --region=us-west1 \
        --target-https-proxy=l7-ilb-proxy \
        --target-https-proxy-region=us-west1 \
        --allow-global-access
    
  2. You can use the gcloud compute forwarding-rules describe command to determine whether a forwarding rule has global access enabled. For example:

     gcloud compute forwarding-rules describe l7-ilb-forwarding-rule-global-access \
         --region=us-west1 \
         --format="get(name,region,allowGlobalAccess)"
    

    When global access is enabled, the word True appears in the output after the name and region of the forwarding rule.

Create a client VM to test global access Console
  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  2. Click Create instance.

  3. Set Name to europe-client-vm.

  4. Set Zone to europe-west1-b.

  5. Click Advanced options.

  6. Click Networking and configure the following fields:

    1. For Network tags, enter allow-ssh.
    2. For Network interfaces, select the following:
      • Network: lb-network
      • Subnet: europe-subnet
  7. Click Create.

gcloud

Create a client VM in the europe-west1-b zone.

gcloud compute instances create europe-client-vm \
    --zone=europe-west1-b \
    --image-family=debian-12 \
    --image-project=debian-cloud \
    --tags=allow-ssh \
    --subnet=europe-subnet
Connect to the VM client and test connectivity
  1. Use ssh to connect to the client instance.

    gcloud compute ssh europe-client-vm \
        --zone=europe-west1-b
    
  2. Test connections to the load balancer as you did from the vm-client in the us-west1 region.

    curl http://10.1.2.99
    
Enable session affinity

These procedures show you how to update a backend service for the example regional internal Application Load Balancer or cross-region internal Application 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 virtual machine (VM) instance or endpoint. In this example, the cookie is named GCILB.

When header field affinity is enabled, the load balancer routes requests to backend VMs or endpoints in a network endpoint group (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 doesn't 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.

Console

To enable or change session affinity for a backend service:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Load balancing page.

    Go to Load balancing

  2. Click Backends.
  3. Click l7-ilb-backend-service (the name of the backend service you created for this example) and click Edit.
  4. On the Backend service details page, click Advanced configuration.
  5. Under Session affinity, select the type of session affinity you want.
  6. Click Update.
gcloud

Use the following Google Cloud CLI commands to update the backend service to different types of session affinity:

    gcloud compute backend-services update l7-ilb-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 backendServices/patch method.

    PATCH https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/[PROJECT_ID]/regions/us-west1/regionBackendServices/l7-ilb-backend-service
    {
      "sessionAffinity": ["GENERATED_COOKIE" | "HEADER_FIELD" | "HTTP_COOKIE" | "CLIENT_IP" ]
    }
    
Restrict which clients can send traffic to the load balancer Note: This section shows you how to restrict client access to your regional internal Application Load Balancer by using firewall rules. You can also use Google Cloud Armor to restrict client access to your load balancer. For more information, see the Security policy overview in the Cloud Armor documentation.

You can restrict clients from connecting to an internal Application Load Balancer forwarding rule VIP by configuring egress firewall rules on these clients. Set these firewall rules on specific client VMs based on service accounts or tags.

You can't use firewall rules to restrict inbound traffic to specific internal Application Load Balancer forwarding rule VIPs. Any client on the same VPC network and in the same region as the forwarding rule VIP can generally send traffic to the forwarding rule VIP.

Additionally, all requests to backends come from proxies that use IP addresses in the proxy-only subnet range. It isn't possible to create firewall rules that allow or deny ingress traffic on these backends based on the forwarding rule VIP used by a client.

Here are some examples of how to use egress firewall rules to restrict traffic to the load balancer's forwarding rule VIP.

Console

To identify the client VMs, tag the specific VMs you want to restrict. These tags are used to associate firewall rules with the tagged client VMs. Then, add the tag to the TARGET_TAG field in the following steps.

Use either a single firewall rule or multiple rules to set this up.

Single egress firewall rule

You can configure one firewall egress rule to deny all egress traffic going from tagged client VMs to a load balancer's VIP.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewall rules page.

    Go to Firewall rules

  2. Click Create firewall rule to create the rule to deny egress traffic from tagged client VMs to a load balancer's VIP.

  3. Click Create.

Multiple egress firewall rules

A more scalable approach involves setting two rules. A default, low-priority rule that restricts all clients from accessing the load balancer's VIP. A second, higher-priority rule that allows a subset of tagged clients to access the load balancer's VIP. Only tagged VMs can access the VIP.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewall rules page.

    Go to Firewall rules

  2. Click Create firewall rule to create the lower priority rule to deny access by default:

  3. Click Create.

  4. Click Create firewall rule to create the higher priority rule to allow traffic from certain tagged instances.

  5. Click Create.

gcloud

To identify the client VMs, tag the specific VMs you want to restrict. Then add the tag to the TARGET_TAG field in these steps.

Use either a single firewall rule or multiple rules to set this up.

Single egress firewall rule

You can configure one firewall egress rule to deny all egress traffic going from tagged client VMs to a load balancer's VIP.

gcloud compute firewall-rules create fr-deny-access \
    --network=lb-network \
    --action=deny \
    --direction=egress \
    --rules=tcp \
    --priority=100 \
    --destination-ranges=10.1.2.99 \
    --target-tags=TARGET_TAG
Multiple egress firewall rules

A more scalable approach involves setting two rules: a default, low-priority rule that restricts all clients from accessing the load balancer's VIP, and a second, higher-priority rule that allows a subset of tagged clients to access the load balancer's VIP. Only tagged VMs can access the VIP.

  1. Create the lower-priority rule:

    gcloud compute firewall-rules create fr-deny-all-access-low-priority \
        --network=lb-network \
        --action=deny \
        --direction=egress \
        --rules=tcp \
        --priority=200 \
        --destination-ranges=10.1.2.99
    
  2. Create the higher priority rule:

    gcloud compute firewall-rules create fr-allow-some-access-high-priority \
        --network=lb-network \
        --action=allow \
        --direction=egress \
        --rules=tcp \
        --priority=100 \
        --destination-ranges=10.1.2.99 \
        --target-tags=TARGET_TAG
    

To use service accounts instead of tags to control access, use the --target-service-accounts option instead of the --target-tags flag when creating firewall rules.

Scale restricted access to internal Application Load Balancer backends based on subnets

Maintaining separate firewall rules or adding new load-balanced IP addresses to existing rules as described in the previous section becomes inconvenient as the number of forwarding rules increases. One way to prevent this is to allocate forwarding rule IP addresses from a reserved subnet. Then, traffic from tagged instances or service accounts can be allowed or blocked by using the reserved subnet as the destination range for firewall rules. This lets you effectively control access to a group of forwarding rule VIPs without having to maintain per-VIP firewall egress rules.

Here are the high-level steps to set this up, assuming that you will create all the other required load balancer resources separately.

gcloud
  1. Create a regional subnet to use to allocate load-balanced IP addresses for forwarding rules:

    gcloud compute networks subnets create l7-ilb-restricted-subnet \
        --network=lb-network \
        --region=us-west1 \
        --range=10.127.0.0/24
    
  2. Create a forwarding rule that takes an address from the subnet. The following example uses the address 10.127.0.1 from the subnet created in the previous step.

    gcloud compute forwarding-rules create l7-ilb-forwarding-rule-restricted \
        --load-balancing-scheme=INTERNAL_MANAGED \
        --network=lb-network \
        --subnet=l7-ilb-restricted-subnet \
        --address=10.127.0.1 \
        --ports=80 \
        --region=us-west1 \
        --target-http-proxy=l7-ilb-proxy \
        --target-http-proxy-region=us-west1
    
  3. Create a firewall rule to restrict traffic destined for the range IP addresses in the forwarding rule subnet (l7-ilb-restricted-subnet):

    gcloud compute firewall-rules create restrict-traffic-to-subnet \
        --network=lb-network \
        --action=deny \
        --direction=egress \
        --rules=tcp:80 \
        --priority=100 \
        --destination-ranges=10.127.0.0/24 \
        --target-tags=TARGET_TAG
    
Configure backend subsetting

Preview

This product or feature is subject to the "Pre-GA Offerings Terms" in the General Service Terms section of the Service Specific Terms. Pre-GA products and features are available "as is" and might have limited support. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

Backend subsetting improves performance and scalability by assigning a subset of backends to each of the proxy instances. When enabled for a backend service, backend subsetting adjusts the number of backends utilized by each proxy instance as follows:

Note: In the REST API, the subsetting.subsetSize setting is available only for Cloud Service Mesh. This setting isn't available for regional internal Application Load Balancer.

This example shows you how to create regional internal Application Load Balancer resources and enable backend subsetting:

  1. Use the example configuration to create a regional backend service l7-ilb-backend-service.
  2. Enable backend subsetting by specifying the --subsetting-policy flag as CONSISTENT_HASH_SUBSETTING. Set the load balancing scheme to INTERNAL_MANAGED.

    gcloud

    Use the following gcloud command to update l7-ilb-backend-service with backend subsetting:

    gcloud beta compute backend-services update l7-ilb-backend-service \
        --region=us-west1 \
        --subsetting-policy=CONSISTENT_HASH_SUBSETTING
    
    API

    Make a PATCH request to the regionBackendServices/patch method method.

    PATCH https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/us-west1/backendServices/l7-ilb-backend-service
    
    {
     "subsetting":
    {
     "policy": CONSISTENT_HASH_SUBSETTING
    }
    }
    

You can also refine backend load balancing by setting the localityLbPolicy policy. For more information, see Traffic policies.

Use the same IP address between multiple internal forwarding rules

For multiple internal forwarding rules to share the same internal IP address, you must reserve the IP address and set its --purpose flag to SHARED_LOADBALANCER_VIP.

gcloud
gcloud compute addresses create SHARED_IP_ADDRESS_NAME \
    --region=REGION \
    --subnet=SUBNET_NAME \
    --purpose=SHARED_LOADBALANCER_VIP

If you need to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, you can create two forwarding rules that use a common IP address. For more information, see

Set up HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect for internal Application Load Balancers

.

Update client HTTP keepalive timeout

The load balancer created in the previous steps has been configured with a default value for the

client HTTP keepalive timeout

.

To update the client HTTP keepalive timeout, use the following instructions.

Console
  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Load balancing page.

    Go to Load balancing.

  2. Click the name of the load balancer that you want to modify.
  3. Click editEdit.
  4. Click Frontend configuration.
  5. Expand Advanced features. For HTTP keepalive timeout, enter a timeout value.
  6. Click Update.
  7. To review your changes, click Review and finalize, and then click Update.
gcloud

For an HTTP load balancer, update the target HTTP proxy by using the gcloud compute target-http-proxies update command.

      gcloud compute target-http-proxies update TARGET_HTTP_PROXY_NAME \
          --http-keep-alive-timeout-sec=HTTP_KEEP_ALIVE_TIMEOUT_SEC \
          --region=REGION
      

For an HTTPS load balancer, update the target HTTPS proxy by using the gcloud compute target-https-proxies update command.

      gcloud compute target-https-proxies update TARGET_HTTP_PROXY_NAME \
          --http-keep-alive-timeout-sec=HTTP_KEEP_ALIVE_TIMEOUT_SEC \
          --region REGION
      

Replace the following:

What's next

RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue

Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo

HTML: 3.2 | Encoding: UTF-8 | Version: 0.7.4