A global retailer wants worldwide shoppers to reach its storefront through one IP address, with each request going to the nearest healthy region's backends, and without DNS-based geographic routing. Which Google Cloud feature provides this?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
The global external Application Load Balancer advertises one anycast virtual IP address. Client traffic enters Google's network close to the user, and the load balancer forwards it to the closest healthy backend that has capacity. Because the single IP is shared across the globe, no DNS geographic policy is needed to steer users. The regional, NAT, and peering options do not provide this global entry point.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Regional internal load balancers serve private clients inside a VPC and are scoped to one region. A DNS geolocation policy is name-based routing, which the scenario rules out.
- C. Cloud NAT translates outbound traffic from private VMs to external addresses. It does not accept inbound storefront requests or route users to backends.
- D. VPC peering connects two VPC networks for private IP routing. It does not provide a public entry point or distribute end-user traffic across regions.