Cyclos on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Cyclos is a banking and payment platform used by microfinance institutions, credit unions, and complementary currency networks. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Cyclos on Cloud Run module on Google Cloud: deploy it, access and verify it, run it day-to-day, observe it, diagnose common problems, and tear it down.

The lab focuses on operating the Cloud Run module and the Google Cloud platform, not on Cyclos product features. For the complete list of provisioned services and every configuration input (organised by group), see the Configuration Guide — this lab deliberately does not duplicate that detail so it stays accurate over time.

Objectives

By the end of this lab you will be able to:

• Deploy the module from the RAD platform and locate the resources it provisions.
• Access and verify the running service.
• Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and backups.
• Observe the service with Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring.
• Diagnose and resolve the most common deployment and runtime issues.
• Tear the deployment down cleanly.

Prerequisites

• Services_GCP deployed in the target project (provides the VPC, Cloud SQL, Artifact Registry, and shared service accounts this module depends on).
• A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
• gcloud CLI authenticated: gcloud auth login and gcloud auth application-default login.
• Project Owner (or equivalent) IAM on the project.
• RAD platform access with permission to deploy modules into the project.

Set these shell variables once; every task below reuses them:

export PROJECT="<your-gcp-project-id>"
export REGION="us-central1"          # the region you deploy into

---

Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]

1. Click Deploy in the RAD platform top navigation, open Cyclos (Cloud Run) from the Platform Modules list to start configuration, set project_id, and review the inputs. Configure only what you need — the Configuration Guide documents every input by group, with defaults. Review the estimated cost (if credits are enabled) and click Deploy, which opens the deployment status page with real-time logs.

2. The platform provisions the Cloud Run service, a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) database with its Secret Manager secrets, a GCS file-storage bucket, builds the container image, and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job (installs the six required PostgreSQL extensions and creates the application database and user). First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates). Cyclos then initialises its schema on first startup, which adds a further 2–5 minutes before the service becomes fully ready.

3. When it completes, discover the resources with name-agnostic filters (so the commands keep working regardless of the deployment suffix):

   SERVICE=$(gcloud run services list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
     --filter="metadata.name~cyclos" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
   SERVICE_URL=$(gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" \
     --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --format="value(status.url)")
   echo "Service: $SERVICE"
   echo "URL:     $SERVICE_URL"

---

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]

1. Confirm the service is healthy and fully initialised (the /api endpoint returns HTTP 200 only once the Cyclos Spring context and database schema are ready):

   curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" "$SERVICE_URL/api"   # expect 200

2. Open the Cyclos web UI at ${SERVICE_URL}/cyclos in a browser. Sign in with the default Cyclos administrator credentials (admin / 1234) and change the password immediately after the setup wizard completes.

   The database password and PostgreSQL superuser secret are available in Secret Manager for infrastructure operations (they are not the Cyclos admin login):

   gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~cyclos"

---

Task 3 — Operate & keep it running (Day-2) [Manual]

1. Inspect the service and its revisions (each deploy creates an immutable revision; traffic shifts to the newest healthy one):

   gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
   gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

2. Scale by changing the min/max instance inputs and clicking Update on the deployment details page — the module owns the service spec, so scaling is a configuration change, not a manual gcloud edit (a manual edit would be reverted on the next apply). Note: Cyclos Community Edition defaults to a single instance; increasing beyond one requires Hazelcast clustering configuration.

3. Update the application version by changing the version input via Update on the deployment details page; a new image builds and a new revision rolls out.

4. Manage secrets and backups:

   gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~cyclos"
   gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init and any scheduled jobs

5. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

   INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
   gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user=cyclos --database=cyclos --project="$PROJECT"

---

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]

1. Logs — from the CLI or the Logs Explorer:

   gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=50

   Logs Explorer filter: resource.type="cloud_run_revision" AND resource.labels.service_name="<service>".

2. Monitoring — open the Cloud Run dashboard for the service and review request count, request latency (P50/P95/P99), instance count (scaling behaviour), and CPU / memory utilisation. The module also provisions an uptime check; confirm it is green under Monitoring → Uptime checks, and review Alerting → Policies.

---

Task 5 — Troubleshoot & debug [Manual]

Durable techniques for the failure modes you are most likely to hit. These are platform-level diagnostics and do not change with Cyclos releases.

• Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors, and confirm env vars and secrets resolved.

  gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
  gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100

• Slow startup or probe failures: Cyclos initialises its PostgreSQL schema on first boot (2–5 minutes). The startup probe uses TCP so it succeeds as soon as Tomcat is listening, avoiding a rolling-update deadlock; the liveness probe on /api then catches an uninitialised Spring context. If the revision is killed before the schema completes, check the startup probe failure_threshold in the Configuration Guide.
• Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret exists, and the db-init job completed successfully.

  gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-db-init" \
    --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

• Image build failed: review Cloud Build history for the failed build's log.
• 403 / permission errors: verify the runtime service account's IAM roles.

See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls section for setting-specific gotchas.

---

Task 6 — Tear down [Automated]

On the Deployments page, open the deployment and click the Trash icon (Delete). Delete runs terraform destroy and is irreversible (the deployment record is retained for history). If a deployment is stuck and the RAD platform can no longer manage it (for example after manual changes that conflict with the Terraform state), use Purge instead — it removes the deployment from RAD's records without destroying the cloud resources (it makes RAD forget the project). This removes everything the module created — the Cloud Run service, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, GCS buckets, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

---

Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15), GCS, secrets, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Health check passes on /api; sign in to Cyclos at /cyclos
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups, DB access
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, schema init, database, build, and IAM issues
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes all module resources