Target pools are used with external passthrough Network Load Balancers. A target pool references member instances, an associated legacy HttpHealthCheck resource, and, optionally, a backup target pool. For more information, read Using target pools.
If successful, the response body contains data with the following structure:
[Output Only] The unique identifier for the resource. This identifier is defined by the server.
creationTimestamp
string
[Output Only] Creation timestamp in RFC3339 text format.
name
string
Name of the resource. Provided by the client when the resource is created. The name must be 1-63 characters long, and comply with RFC1035. Specifically, the name must be 1-63 characters long and match the regular expression [a-z]([-a-z0-9]*[a-z0-9])? which means the first character must be a lowercase letter, and all following characters must be a dash, lowercase letter, or digit, except the last character, which cannot be a dash.
description
string
An optional description of this resource. Provide this property when you create the resource.
region
string
[Output Only] URL of the region where the target pool resides.
healthChecks[]
string
The URL of the HttpHealthCheck resource. A member instance in this pool is considered healthy if and only if the health checks pass. Only legacy HttpHealthChecks are supported. Only one health check may be specified.
instances[]
string
A list of resource URLs to the virtual machine instances serving this pool. They must live in zones contained in the same region as this pool.
sessionAffinity
enum
Session affinity option, must be one of the following values: NONE: Connections from the same client IP may go to any instance in the pool. CLIENT_IP: Connections from the same client IP will go to the same instance in the pool while that instance remains healthy. CLIENT_IP_PROTO: Connections from the same client IP with the same IP protocol will go to the same instance in the pool while that instance remains healthy.
failoverRatio
number
This field is applicable only when the containing target pool is serving a forwarding rule as the primary pool (i.e., not as a backup pool to some other target pool). The value of the field must be in [0, 1].
If set, backupPool must also be set. They together define the fallback behavior of the primary target pool: if the ratio of the healthy instances in the primary pool is at or below this number, traffic arriving at the load-balanced IP will be directed to the backup pool.
In case where failoverRatio is not set or all the instances in the backup pool are unhealthy, the traffic will be directed back to the primary pool in the "force" mode, where traffic will be spread to the healthy instances with the best effort, or to all instances when no instance is healthy.
backupPool
string
The server-defined URL for the resource. This field is applicable only when the containing target pool is serving a forwarding rule as the primary pool, and its failoverRatio field is properly set to a value between [0, 1]. backupPool and failoverRatio together define the fallback behavior of the primary target pool: if the ratio of the healthy instances in the primary pool is at or below failoverRatio, traffic arriving at the load-balanced IP will be directed to the backup pool.
In case where failoverRatio and backupPool are not set, or all the instances in the backup pool are unhealthy, the traffic will be directed back to the primary pool in the "force" mode, where traffic will be spread to the healthy instances with the best effort, or to all instances when no instance is healthy.
selfLink
string
[Output Only] Server-defined URL for the resource.
securityPolicy
string
[Output Only] The resource URL for the security policy associated with this target pool.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-07-28 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eThis page details how to retrieve a specific Target Pool resource using a \u003ccode\u003eGET\u003c/code\u003e HTTP request, with the request URL requiring parameters for \u003ccode\u003eproject\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003eregion\u003c/code\u003e, and \u003ccode\u003etargetPool\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe request body must be empty, and the response body will contain a JSON representation of the Target Pool resource, including details such as \u003ccode\u003ekind\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003eid\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003ecreationTimestamp\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003ename\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003edescription\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003eregion\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003ehealthChecks\u003c/code\u003e, and \u003ccode\u003einstances\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eTarget pools, used with external passthrough Network Load Balancers, are described as referencing member instances, a legacy \u003ccode\u003eHttpHealthCheck\u003c/code\u003e resource, and optionally, a backup target pool.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eAuthorization to access target pool information requires specific OAuth scopes like \u003ccode\u003ehttps://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute.readonly\u003c/code\u003e, \u003ccode\u003ehttps://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute\u003c/code\u003e, or \u003ccode\u003ehttps://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform\u003c/code\u003e along with the IAM permission \u003ccode\u003ecompute.targetPools.get\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ccode\u003efailoverRatio\u003c/code\u003e and \u003ccode\u003ebackupPool\u003c/code\u003e fields define the fallback behavior of a primary target pool, directing traffic to the backup pool if the ratio of healthy instances falls below the specified \u003ccode\u003efailoverRatio\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,["# Method: targetPools.get\n\n- [HTTP request](#body.HTTP_TEMPLATE)\n- [Path parameters](#body.PATH_PARAMETERS)\n- [Request body](#body.request_body)\n- [Response body](#body.response_body)\n - [JSON representation](#body.TargetPool.SCHEMA_REPRESENTATION)\n- [Authorization scopes](#body.aspect)\n- [IAM Permissions](#body.aspect_1)\n- [Try it!](#try-it)\n\nReturns the specified target pool.\n\n### HTTP request\n\n`GET https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/{project}/regions/{region}/targetPools/{targetPool}`\n\nThe URL uses [gRPC Transcoding](https://google.aip.dev/127) syntax.\n\n### Path parameters\n\n### Request body\n\nThe request body must be empty.\n\n### Response body\n\nRepresents a Target Pool resource.\n\nTarget pools are used with external passthrough Network Load Balancers. A target pool references member instances, an associated legacy HttpHealthCheck resource, and, optionally, a backup target pool. For more information, read [Using target pools](/load-balancing/docs/target-pools).\n\nIf successful, the response body contains data with the following structure:\n\n### Authorization scopes\n\nRequires one of the following OAuth scopes:\n\n- `https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute.readonly`\n- `\n https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute`\n- `\n https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform`\n\nFor more information, see the [Authentication Overview](/docs/authentication#authorization-gcp).\n\n### IAM Permissions\n\nIn addition to any permissions specified on the fields above, authorization requires one or more of the following [IAM](https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/) permissions:\n\n- `compute.targetPools.get`\n\nTo find predefined roles that contain those permissions, see [Compute Engine IAM Roles](/compute/docs/access/iam)."]]