I’m getting confused about the different backend options available in Google Cloud Platform load balancing. When I look at the load balancer settings, I see several backend types listed:
backend service (for HTTP/HTTPS load balancers)
backend bucket (for HTTP/HTTPS load balancers)
regional backend service (for internal load balancers)
target pools (for TCP load balancers)
From what I can tell, target pools work with TCP forwarding rules while backend services are used with URL maps for HTTP/HTTPS load balancing. However, when I compare their configuration options, they seem pretty similar to me. Both appear in the basic menu as backend options.
Can someone explain if there are other important differences between these backend types beyond just their use cases? Or are they basically the same thing with different names depending on the load balancer type?
target pools are kinda old news now, they lack health checks and the routing options backend services have. also, regional backend services are limited to one region while globals can span multiple. it really depends on the features u need, not just the names.
The main difference is how they’re built and what they can do. Target pools are the old-school approach - they just group instances together and do basic round-robin routing to healthy ones. That’s it. Backend services are way more advanced. You get smart traffic distribution, session affinity, Cloud CDN integration, and support for different backend types like instance groups, NEGs, or even Cloud Run. Regional backend services stay within one region (lower latency for internal traffic) while global ones can route traffic across regions based on proximity and capacity. Regional ones also handle protocols like gRPC and HTTP/2 that target pools can’t touch. Backend services let you control timeouts, retry policies, and custom headers. Target pools don’t have any of these options, so they’re useless for complex apps that need fine-tuned load balancing.
Interesting question! I’ve been wondering the same thing lately. Any gotchas when switching between these backend types? Does migrating from target pools to backend services need major config changes, or is it pretty straightforward?