Functional difference between UMIG and ZONAL NEG IP and PORT

[amitbaid]

I would like to understand the functional difference between working of UMIG and Zonal NEG IP and PORT. I see them quite similar, 

• they can be added as backend to load balancer
• both of the types only support instance from a single AZ
• they do not support auto scaling
• except for NEG offering default port and port override feature, I am not coming across any major difference. 

I would also like to know when do I choose UMIG vs Zonal NEG IP and Port as backend for a load balancer. 

[Rfelizardo]

Hi @amitbaid ,

Welcome to the Google Cloud Community!

Here are the difference when implementing a UMIG and Zonal NEG IP and Port as a backend for a load balancer.

	Unmanaged Instance Group	Zonal NEG IP
Control	control over VM instances, such as configurations, OS types and instance types.	Fine-grained control over your backend endpoints. Best used when managing a Kubernetes Ingress with NEGs.
Managing	Flexibility in managing the lifecycle of instances within the Instance Group.	You prefer a lightweight solution without the overhead of managing instance.
Flexibility	You want to manage auto-scaling, health check and other scalability features on your own or through additional GCP services.	You need to specify the route traffic to a particular IP address or ports.

I hope you find this comparison useful when implementing either an unmanaged instance groups vs Zonal NEG IP and Port.