Overview

Google Cloud load balancers offer traffic management capabilities that vary by load balancer.

In this lab, you create a regional internal Application Load Balancer with two backends. Each backend will be an instance group. You will configure the load balancer to create a blue-green deployment.

The blue deployment refers to the current version of your application, and the green deployment refers to a new application version. You configure the load balancer to send 70% of the traffic to the blue deployment and 30% to the green deployment. When you’re finished, the environment will look like this:

Objectives

In this lab, you perform the following tasks:

• View the Google Cloud infrastructure that the load balancer will use.
• Create a regional internal Application Load Balancer with two backends.
• Implement traffic management on the load balancer.
• Test the load balancer.

Setup

For each lab, you get a new Google Cloud project and set of resources for a fixed time at no cost.

1. Click the Start Lab button. If you need to pay for the lab, a pop-up opens for you to select your payment method. On the left is the Lab Details panel with the following:

   • The Open Google Cloud console button
   • Time remaining
   • The temporary credentials that you must use for this lab
   • Other information, if needed, to step through this lab

2. Click Open Google Cloud console (or right-click and select Open Link in Incognito Window if you are running the Chrome browser).

   The lab spins up resources, and then opens another tab that shows the Sign in page.

   Tip: Arrange the tabs in separate windows, side-by-side.

   Note: If you see the Choose an account dialog, click Use Another Account.

3. If necessary, copy the Username below and paste it into the Sign in dialog.

   {{{user_0.username | "Username"}}}

   You can also find the Username in the Lab Details panel.

4. Click Next.

5. Copy the Password below and paste it into the Welcome dialog.

   {{{user_0.password | "Password"}}}

   You can also find the Password in the Lab Details panel.

6. Click Next.

   Important: You must use the credentials the lab provides you. Do not use your Google Cloud account credentials. Note: Using your own Google Cloud account for this lab may incur extra charges.

7. Click through the subsequent pages:

   • Accept the terms and conditions.
   • Do not add recovery options or two-factor authentication (because this is a temporary account).
   • Do not sign up for free trials.

After a few moments, the Google Cloud console opens in this tab.

Note: To view a menu with a list of Google Cloud products and services, click the Navigation menu at the top-left, or type the service or product name in the Search field.

Task 1. View the Google Cloud infrastructure that the load balancer will use

In this task, you explore the pre-configured Google Cloud infrastructure, including the network, firewall rules, and instance groups, that the load balancer will utilize. You then create a test VM and verify the backend instances.

1. In the Google Cloud console, in the Navigation menu (), click VPC network > VPC networks.

   Each Google Cloud project starts with the default network. In addition, the my-internal-app network was created for you as part of your network diagram.

   Note the my-internal-app network with its subnets: subnet-a and subnet-b. Both subnets are in the region.

   Managed instance groups in subnet-a and subnet-b were also created for you.

2. (Optional) Click subnet-a and observe its configuration.

3. (Optional) Click subnet-b and observe its configuration.

4. In the Navigation menu (), click VPC network > Firewall.
   Note the following firewall rules that were created for you:

   Firewall rule	Purpose
   app-allow-icmp	Allows ICMP communication
   app-allow-ssh-rdp	Allows SSH and RDP over TCP ports 22 and 3389
   fw-allow-health-checks	Allow health checks over TCP port 80
   fw-allow-lb-access	Allow traffic in the 10.10.0.0/16 subnet

5. (Optional) View the contents of each firewall rule.

6. In the Google Cloud console, in the Navigation menu (), click View All Products. In the left hand pane, select Networking > Network Connectivity > Cloud Routers.

View the instance groups

The instance groups were created for you. Next, you will observe the configuration details.

1. On the Navigation menu, click Compute Engine > VM instances.
   Note the two VM instances that start with instance-group-1 and instance-group-2.

2. Click instance-group-1.

3. Scroll to Network interfaces.
   Note that the instance group is in subnet-a, and its internal IP address is 10.10.20.2.

4. Return to the VM instances page, and repeat steps 2 and 3 for instance-group-2.
   Note that this instance group is in subnet-b, and its internal IP address is 10.10.30.2.

Create a VM for testing

You create a VM called utility-vm in subnet-a of the my-internal-app network and use it to test the load balancer.

1. Return to the VM instances page, and click Create instance.

2. Specify the following, and leave the remaining settings as their defaults:

   Property	Value (type value or select option as specified)
   Name	utility-vm
   Region
   Zone
   Series	E2
   Machine type	e2-medium (2vCPU, 4 GB memory)

3. Click OS and storage.

   Click Change to begin configuring your boot disk and select the following values:

   • Operating system: Debian
   • Version: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) x86/64, amd64

4. Click Networking.

5. For Network interfaces, click default.

6. Set the network interface properties and values as shown in the following table, and leave the remaining properties as their default values:

   Property	Value (type value or select option as specified)
   Network	my-internal-app
   Subnetwork	subnet-a
   Primary internal IPv4 address	Ephemeral (Custom)
   Custom ephemeral IP address	10.10.20.50
   External IPv4 address	None

7. Click Done.

8. Click Create.
   Wait for the new VM to be created.

Verify the backends

1. For utility-vm, click SSH to launch a terminal and connect.
   If you see the Allow SSH-in-browser to connect to VMs pop-up, click Authorize.

2. To verify the welcome page for instance-group-1-xxxx, run the following command:

curl 10.10.20.2

The output is shown below. Note that the server location is set to .

<h1>Internal Load Balancing Lab</h1><h2>Client IP</h2>Your IP address : 10.10.20.50<h2>Hostname</h2>Server Hostname: instance-group-1-1zn8<h2>Server Location</h2>Region and Zone: {{{project_0.default_zone | Zone 1}}}

3. To verify the welcome page for instance-group-2-xxxx, run the following command:

curl 10.10.30.2

The output is shown below. Note that the server location is set to .

<h1>Internal Load Balancing Lab</h1><h2>Client IP</h2>Your IP address : 10.10.20.50<h2>Hostname</h2>Server Hostname: instance-group-2-q5wp<h2>Server Location</h2>Region and Zone: {{{project_0.default_zone_2 | Zone 2}}}

Note: This will be useful when verifying that the load balancer sends traffic to both backends.

4. Close the SSH terminal to utility-vm:

exit

Click Check my progress to verify the objective. Finish setting up the network infrastructure.

Task 2. Configure the load balancer

In this task, you configure a regional internal Application Load Balancer to balance traffic between the two backends (instance-group-1 in and instance-group-2 in ), as shown (the region and zones may vary as per the lab requirement):

Start the configuration

1. In the Google Cloud console, in the Navigation menu (), click View All Products. In the left hand pane, select Networking > Network Services > Load balancing.

2. Click Create load balancer.

3. Under Application Load Balancer (HTTP/HTTPS), click next.

4. For Public facing or internal, select internal and click next. This selection creates a regional internal Application Load Balancer. This choice requires the backends to be in a single region .

5. For Cross-region or single region deployment, select Best for regional workloads and click next.

6. Click Configure.

7. For Name, type my-ilb

8. For Region, select

9. For Network, select my-internal-app.

The proxy servers that implement the regional internal Application Load Balancer require IP addresses. These IP addresses are allocated automatically from a subnet that you specify.

10. Under Proxy-only subnet required, click Reserve subnet.

11. For Name, type my-proxy-subnet

12. For IP address range, type 10.10.40.0/24

13. Click Add.
    Wait for the proxy-only subnet to be created. When that is successful, the console displays the name of the proxy-only subnet followed by the IP address range that you specified.

Configure the blue-service backend

This backend service refers to the present ("blue") version of your application.

1. Click Backend configuration.

2. For Backend configuration, for Create or select backend service, select Create a backend service.

3. For Name, type blue-service.

4. In Backends, specify the following, and leave the remaining settings as their defaults:

   Property	Value (type value or select option as specified)
   Instance group	instance-group-1
   Port numbers	80

5. Click Done.

6. For Health check, select Create a health check.

7. Specify the following, and leave the remaining settings as their defaults:

   Property	Value (select option as specified)
   Name	blue-health-check
   Protocol	TCP
   Port	80
   Check interval	10 seconds
   Timeout	5 seconds
   Healthy threshold	2
   Unhealthy threshold	3

Note: Health checks determine which instances can receive new connections. This HTTP health check polls instances every ten seconds and waits up to five seconds for a response. After two successful probe attempts, the backend is considered to be healthy. After three failed attempts, the backend is considered to be unhealthy.

8. Click Save.

9. Click Create.

10. Verify that there is a blue check mark next to Backend configuration in the Google Cloud console. If there isn't, double-check that you have completed all the steps above.

Configure the green-service backend

This backend service refers to the new ("green") version of your application.

1. For Backend configuration, for Create or select backend service, select Create a backend service.

2. For Name, type green-service.

3. In Backends, specify the following, and leave the remaining settings as their defaults:

   Property	Value (type value or select option as specified)
   Instance group	instance-group-2
   Port numbers	80

4. Click Done.

5. For Health check, select Create a health check.

6. Specify the following, and leave the remaining settings as their defaults:

   Property	Value (select option as specified)
   Name	green-health-check
   Protocol	TCP
   Port	80
   Check interval	10 seconds
   Timeout	5 seconds
   Healthy threshold	2
   Unhealthy threshold	3

7. Click Save.

8. Click Create.

Under Backend services, you should now see two entries: one for the blue-service and another for the green-service. If you do not see the green-service, you will need to re-do the task Configure the green-service backend.

9. Click Ok.

Configure the "blue-green" routing rule

Create a routing rule that routes 70% of traffic to the blue-service and 30% of traffic to the green service.

1. Click Routing rules.

2. In the Routing rules panel, for Mode, select Advanded host and path rule.

3. Click Add host and path rule.

4. For Hosts, type *. The * (asterisk) matches all hosts.

5. Traffic management is configured using YAML format. Examine the following YAML code, and then copy and paste it into line 1 of the multi-line field Path matcher (matches, actions, and services).

defaultService: regions/{{{project_0.default_region | Region}}}/backendServices/blue-service name: matcher1 routeRules: - matchRules: - prefixMatch: / priority: 0 routeAction: weightedBackendServices: - backendService: regions/{{{project_0.default_region | Region}}}/backendServices/blue-service weight: 70 - backendService: regions/{{{project_0.default_region | Region}}}/backendServices/green-service weight: 30

6. Click Done.

Configure the default routing rule

When traffic does not match any of the other routing rules, the load balancer uses the default routing rule. Even though the rule you configured is designed to match all traffic, the default routing rule is required. You will configure the default routing rule to use the blue-service backend.

1. Click (Default) Route traffic to backend "" for any unmatched hosts.

2. In the Edit host and path rule panel, for Service, select blue-service, and then click Done.

Configure the frontend

The frontend forwards traffic to the backends.

1. Click Frontend configuration.

2. Specify the following, and leave the remaining settings as their defaults:

   Property	Value (type value or select option as specified)
   Subnetwork	subnet-b
   IP address	Ephemeral (Custom)
   Custom ephemeral IP address	10.10.30.5

3. Click Done.

Review and create the load balancer

1. (Optional) Click Review and finalize. Review the Backend and Frontend.

2. Click Create.
   Wait for the load balancer to be created before starting the next task.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective. Configure the load balancer.

Task 3. Test the load balancer

In this task, you verify that the my-ilb IP address forwards most of the traffic to the blue-service running on instance-group-1 in .

Access the load balancer

1. In the Navigation menu, click Compute Engine > VM instances.

2. For utility-vm, click SSH to launch a terminal and connect.

3. To verify that the load balancer forwards traffic, run the following command:

curl 10.10.30.5

The output should look like this:

<h1>Internal Load Balancing Lab</h1><h2>Client IP</h2>Your IP address : 10.10.20.50<h2>Hostname</h2>Server Hostname: instance-group-2-1zn8<h2>Server Location</h2>Region and Zone: YOUR_LAB_ZONE As expected, traffic is forwarded from the load balancer (10.10.30.5) to either the blue-service backend or the green-service backend.

4. Run the same command a few times:

curl 10.10.30.5 curl 10.10.30.5 curl 10.10.30.5 curl 10.10.30.5 curl 10.10.30.5 curl 10.10.30.5 curl 10.10.30.5 curl 10.10.30.5 curl 10.10.30.5 curl 10.10.30.5

Most responses should come from instance-group-1 in , which is the blue-service. Fewer responses come from instance-group-2 in , which is the green-service. (Recall that you configured the load balancer to route 70% of the traffic to the blue-service.) If you do not see that most responses come from instance-group-1, run the commands again.

Task 4. Review

In this lab, you created two managed instance groups in the region. You also created some firewall rules. The firewall rules allow traffic from clients and the health checkers to the managed instance groups. You configured a regional internal Application Load Balancer, using the managed instance groups as backends. Finally, you tested the load balancer to ensure that it works as expected.

End your lab

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