title: Relationship between Forwarding Rules, Target HTTP Proxy, URL Map, and Backend Service, in GCP
body: <p>I'm new to GCP and pretty confused by the load balancing setup if you have an HTTP service (I asked a different question about TCP load balancing here: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59361478/purpose-of-target-pools-in-gcp">purpose of Target Pools in GCP</a>).</p>
  
  <p>It seems like, if you have a service which uses HTTP and you want to use Load Balancing, you have to create a lot of different components to make it happen.</p>
  
  <p>In the tutorial I'm going through in Qwiklabs (<a href="https://google.qwiklabs.com/focuses/558?parent=catalog" rel="noreferrer">https://google.qwiklabs.com/focuses/558?parent=catalog</a>), you need to set things up so that requests flow like this: <strong>Forwarding Rule -> Target HTTP Proxy -> URL Map -> Backend Service -> Managed Instance Group</strong>. However, it doesn't really explain the relationship between these things.</p>
  
  <p>I think the purpose of the Managed Instance Group is clear, but I don't understand the relationship between the others or their purpose. Can you provide an easy definition of the other components and describe how they are different from each other?</p>