I am using GKE, and because I have a VPC enabled cluster, the BackendConfigs were using NEG to route traffic directly to pods, completely bypassing the usual kubernetes service behavior I was used to.

I had to declare my own backend config instead of allowing the default version, and I also had to instruct my service to use it of course.

This change was absolutely brutal to unpack. I'm confused that I haven't been able to find documentation very easily, and not much help from AI.