Routes and routing in GCP - Mini Project: Build & Apply

PMC: Routes and routing

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a simple web application on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). To make sure users reach the right parts of your app, you need to create routes that direct traffic properly.Think of routes like street signs in a city. Each sign points visitors to the correct destination. In this project, you will create routing rules for your app using GCP's Cloud Run service and URL maps.

🎯 Goal: Build a routing configuration on GCP that directs traffic to two different Cloud Run services based on the URL path.You will create a URL map with two routes: one for /app1/* and another for /app2/*. Each route will send traffic to its respective Cloud Run service.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a URL map resource with routing rules

Define two backend services representing Cloud Run apps

Set routing rules to direct /app1/* to backend service 1

Set routing rules to direct /app2/* to backend service 2

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Routing is essential in cloud applications to direct user requests to the correct services. This project simulates setting up routing rules for a multi-service web app on GCP.

💼 Career

Cloud engineers and DevOps professionals often configure routing and load balancing to ensure applications are reachable and scalable.

1

Create backend services for Cloud Run apps

Create two backend services named backend-app1 and backend-app2 representing your Cloud Run applications. Use the exact names and set the protocol to HTTP.

GCP

# Define backend service backend-app1
# Define backend service backend-app2

Need a hint?

Use google_compute_backend_service resource with name and protocol set to HTTP.

2

Create a URL map resource

Create a URL map resource named app-url-map that will hold routing rules for your backend services.

GCP

resource "google_compute_backend_service" "backend_app1" {
  name     = "backend-app1"
  protocol = "HTTP"
}

resource "google_compute_backend_service" "backend_app2" {
  name     = "backend-app2"
  protocol = "HTTP"
}

# Create URL map resource app-url-map

Need a hint?

Use google_compute_url_map resource with the name app-url-map.

3

Add routing rules to the URL map

Add routing rules to app-url-map so that requests to /app1/* go to backend-app1 and requests to /app2/* go to backend-app2. Use path_matcher blocks with path_rules for each route.

GCP

resource "google_compute_backend_service" "backend_app1" {
  name     = "backend-app1"
  protocol = "HTTP"
}

resource "google_compute_backend_service" "backend_app2" {
  name     = "backend-app2"
  protocol = "HTTP"
}

resource "google_compute_url_map" "app_url_map" {
  name = "app-url-map"

  # Add path_matcher with path_rules here
}

Need a hint?

Use path_matcher blocks with path_rule inside the URL map to route paths to backend services.

4

Set default service for unmatched routes

Set the default_service attribute in app-url-map to point to backend-app1 so that any requests not matching /app1/* or /app2/* go to backend-app1.

GCP

resource "google_compute_backend_service" "backend_app1" {
  name     = "backend-app1"
  protocol = "HTTP"
}

resource "google_compute_backend_service" "backend_app2" {
  name     = "backend-app2"
  protocol = "HTTP"
}

resource "google_compute_url_map" "app_url_map" {
  name = "app-url-map"

  path_matcher {
    name            = "app1-matcher"
    default_service = google_compute_backend_service.backend_app1.self_link

    path_rule {
      paths   = ["/app1/*"]
      service = google_compute_backend_service.backend_app1.self_link
    }
  }

  path_matcher {
    name            = "app2-matcher"
    default_service = google_compute_backend_service.backend_app2.self_link

    path_rule {
      paths   = ["/app2/*"]
      service = google_compute_backend_service.backend_app2.self_link
    }
  }

  # Set default_service here
}

Need a hint?

Set the default_service attribute at the top level of the URL map resource.