Cloud Load Balancing | Google Cloud

Cloud Load Balancing

High performance, scalable load balancing on Google Cloud

A fully managed service that intelligently distributes traffic across your apps for high performance and resilience, scaling seamlessly from zero to millions of users.

Features

HTTP(S) load balancing

Application Load Balancers can balance HTTP and HTTPS traffic across multiple backend instances, across multiple regions. Your entire app is available using a single global IP address, resulting in a simplified DNS setup. Application Load Balancers are scalable, fault-tolerant, require no pre-warming, and enable content-based load balancing. For HTTPS traffic, they provide SSL termination and load balancing.

Choose a load balancer
Choose a load balancer

TCP/SSL/UDP load balancing

Network Load Balancers are Layer 4 load balancers that can distribute traffic to back ends located either in a single region or across multiple regions. These load balancers are scalable, don't require pre-warming, and use health checks to help ensure that only healthy instances receive traffic. Available Network Load Balancers: proxy and passthrough.

SSL offload

SSL offload enables you to centrally manage SSL certificates and decryption. You can enable encryption between your load balancing layer and backends to ensure the highest level of security, with some additional overhead for processing on backends.

Cloud CDN

Enable Cloud CDN with Application Load Balancers for optimizing application delivery for your users with a single checkbox.

Google Cloud Armor

Google Cloud Armor security policies enable you to rate-limit or redirect requests to your Application or Network Load Balancers at the Google Cloud edge, as close as possible to the source of incoming traffic.

Cloud Logging

Cloud Logging for load balancing logs all the load balancing requests sent to your load balancer. These logs can be used for debugging as well as analyzing your user traffic. You can view request logs and export them to Cloud Storage, BigQuery, or Pub/Sub for analysis.

Extensibility and programmability

Service Extensions provide programmability and extensibility on load balancing data paths. Service Extensions callouts enable gRPC calls to user-managed services during data processing, while Service Extensions plugins allow the insertion of custom code into the networking data path using WebAssembly (Wasm).

Effortless autoscaling

Autoscaling helps your applications gracefully handle increases in traffic and reduces cost when the need for resources is lower. You just define the autoscaling policy and the autoscaler performs automatic scaling based on the measured load. No pre-warming required—go from zero to full throttle in seconds.

High-fidelity health checks

Health checks ensure that new connections are only load balanced to healthy backends that are up and ready to receive them. High fidelity health checks ensure that the probes mimic actual traffic to backends.

Advanced feature support

Cloud Load Balancing also includes advanced support features, such as IPv6 global load balancing, WebSockets, user-defined request headers, and protocol forwarding for private VIPs.

Affinity

Cloud Load Balancing session affinity provides the ability to direct and stick user traffic to specific backend instances.

How It Works

A single IP address advertises your service globally from Google's network edge. As requests arrive, the system intelligently routes traffic to the optimal backend—VM, container, or serverless—based on health, proximity, and capacity to ensure the lowest latency path.

Virtual Machines and Networking in the Cloud
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Common Uses

Global application delivery

Unify your global application delivery

Deliver a unified, global front end for all apps, wherever they're hosted. Cloud load balancers use a single anycast IP to intelligently direct user traffic to the closest backend (Google Cloud, other public clouds, or on-premises). This simplifies DNS, centralizes traffic management, and leverages Google's 202+ points of presence for minimal latency and a superior global user experience.

Unify your global application delivery

Deliver a unified, global front end for all apps, wherever they're hosted. Cloud load balancers use a single anycast IP to intelligently direct user traffic to the closest backend (Google Cloud, other public clouds, or on-premises). This simplifies DNS, centralizes traffic management, and leverages Google's 202+ points of presence for minimal latency and a superior global user experience.

Modern and AI applications

Optimize modern applications and AI/ML workloads

Cloud Load Balancing enables model-aware routing for AI and ML workloads, which directs traffic based on specific model needs, optimizing GPU/TPU utilization and ensuring cost-effective, low-latency inference for your most demanding applications. Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) natively creates and manages Google Cloud load balancers when you create a LoadBalancer Service.

Optimize modern applications and AI/ML workloads

Cloud Load Balancing enables model-aware routing for AI and ML workloads, which directs traffic based on specific model needs, optimizing GPU/TPU utilization and ensuring cost-effective, low-latency inference for your most demanding applications. Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) natively creates and manages Google Cloud load balancers when you create a LoadBalancer Service.

Hybrid and multicloud networking

Simplify and secure hybrid connectivity

Build a resilient, secure foundation for your distributed enterprise. Google Cloud load balancers, core to the Cross-Cloud Network, offer "any-to-any" connectivity for data centers, branches, and multicloud resources. Extend consistent, high-performance application delivery and security across your hybrid environment, ensuring secure, reliable access for your global workforce and applications.

Simplify and secure hybrid connectivity

Build a resilient, secure foundation for your distributed enterprise. Google Cloud load balancers, core to the Cross-Cloud Network, offer "any-to-any" connectivity for data centers, branches, and multicloud resources. Extend consistent, high-performance application delivery and security across your hybrid environment, ensuring secure, reliable access for your global workforce and applications.

Secure and scale application delivery

AI-powered security and performance

Enhance your security and application performance with ML-powered networking. Integrated with Cloud Armor, Google Cloud load balancers provide adaptive DDoS protection and a robust WAF to safeguard your applications at the edge. Leverage the global scale of Google’s content delivery networks (CDN) to bring your content closer to your end users.

AI-powered security and performance

Enhance your security and application performance with ML-powered networking. Integrated with Cloud Armor, Google Cloud load balancers provide adaptive DDoS protection and a robust WAF to safeguard your applications at the edge. Leverage the global scale of Google’s content delivery networks (CDN) to bring your content closer to your end users.

Pricing

Detailed Google Cloud networking pricing

Load balancing and forwarding rules

Pricing details

Learn more about load balancing and forwarding rules pricing.

Internal Application Load Balancer

Pricing details

Learn more about Internal Application Load Balancer pricing.

Authorization policy charges

Pricing details

Learn more about authorization policy pricing.

Compute Engine self-managed TSL certificates

Pricing details

Learn more about SSL certificate pricing.

Detailed Google Cloud networking pricing

Pricing calculator

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Custom Quote

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Deploy a global hybrid app

Architect a global front end

Hybrid connectivity endpoint

Securely connect across clouds

Optimize routing for AI/ML

Edge performance

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