Professional Cloud ArchitectManage and provision solution infrastructureMedium
A retail company is expanding its online presence globally and needs to ensure that its web application is highly available and responsive to users worldwide. The application uses a multi-region deployment on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). You need to configure a single global IP address for the application, with intelligent routing to the nearest healthy backend. Which Google Cloud load balancing solution should you use?
- AInternal HTTP(S) Load Balancer
- BInternal TCP/UDP Load Balancer
- CNetwork Load Balancer
- DExternal HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
The External HTTP(S) Load Balancer provides a single global IP address and intelligently routes traffic to the nearest healthy backend for HTTP/HTTPS applications, which is ideal for a global web application on GKE.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer is for internal traffic within a VPC network, not for external global access.
- B. Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer is for internal TCP/UDP traffic within a VPC network, not for external global access.
- C. Network Load Balancer is a regional, pass-through load balancer for TCP/UDP traffic, not application-aware or global for HTTP(S).
External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
A global, highly scalable load balancer that distributes HTTP/HTTPS traffic to backends based on URL maps and health checks, providing a single IP address.
- Global load balancing for HTTP/HTTPS traffic.
- Provides a single global IP address.
- Intelligent routing based on URL paths, hosts, and health.
- Supports GKE, Compute Engine, and Cloud Run backends.
Memory trick: External HTTP(S) is for the world wide web, Network is for raw connections, Internal is for within.