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Documenso on GKE Autopilot — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Documenso is an open-source DocuSign alternative — a Next.js + Prisma application for sending, signing, and managing e-signature documents. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Documenso on GKE Autopilot 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 GKE module and the Google Cloud platform, not on Documenso 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.
  • Connect to the GKE cluster, access the running workload, and complete Documenso's first-run account setup.
  • Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and storage.
  • Observe the workload 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, GKE Autopilot cluster, Cloud SQL, Artifact Registry, and shared service accounts this module depends on).
  • A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
  • gcloud CLI and kubectl installed; gcloud auth login and gcloud auth application-default login completed.
  • 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 Documenso (GKE) 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 deploys the workload into the GKE Autopilot cluster, provisions a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) database with its Secret Manager secrets (NEXTAUTH_SECRET, NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_KEY, NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_SECONDARY_KEY, an HMAC key pair for optional S3 upload transport, and the database password), a Cloud Storage uploads bucket, a Cloud Filestore (NFS) instance, a Gateway with a reserved static IP, builds the custom container image, and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job. First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates).

  3. Connect to the cluster and discover the namespace with name-agnostic filters:

    CLUSTER=$(gcloud container clusters list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    gcloud container clusters get-credentials "$CLUSTER" --region="$REGION" --project="$PROJECT"

    NS=$(kubectl get ns -o name | grep documenso | head -1 | cut -d/ -f2)
    echo "Cluster: $CLUSTER   Namespace: $NS"
    kubectl get all -n "$NS"

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]​

  1. Confirm the workload is running and find its external address. Documenso defaults enable_custom_domain = true, so a Gateway with a reserved static IP is provisioned automatically; if application_domains is left empty, a nip.io hostname based on that IP is used:

    kubectl get pods,svc,gateway -n "$NS"
    EXTERNAL_IP=$(kubectl get svc -n "$NS" \
      -o jsonpath='{.items[?(@.spec.type=="LoadBalancer")].status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
    echo "External IP: $EXTERNAL_IP"

  2. Confirm the service responds. Documenso has no dedicated health endpoint — the startup probe is an HTTP GET / with a generous ~10-minute budget to absorb cold start plus first-boot Prisma migrations:

    curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "http://${EXTERNAL_IP}"   # expect 200 (or a redirect to /signin)

  3. Open http://${EXTERNAL_IP} (or the assigned nip.io/custom-domain URL) in a browser. Documenso provisions no bootstrap admin account — the first person to complete sign-up through the app's own web UI becomes the account owner. Create that account now.

  4. Set webapp_url to the stable domain/IP via Update. Until it is set explicitly, the entrypoint re-derives NEXTAUTH_URL/NEXT_PUBLIC_WEBAPP_URL from the platform-injected GKE_SERVICE_URL on every boot.

  5. Signing certificate. With no certificate supplied, the app self-signs a throwaway .p12 at boot so document signing works end-to-end for testing — but the signature is not trusted by PDF readers. For anything beyond this lab, supply a real certificate (see Task 3, step 5).

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

  1. Inspect the workload — deployment, pods, and storage:

    kubectl get deploy,pods,pvc -n "$NS"
    kubectl describe deploy -n "$NS"

  2. Scale by changing the min/max instance inputs and clicking Update on the deployment details page — the module owns the workload spec, so scaling is a configuration change, not a manual kubectl scale (a manual edit would be reverted on the next apply). Documenso defaults to min_instance_count = 0 (scale-to-zero) and max_instance_count = 3. Session affinity (ClientIP) is set by default to keep a client routed to the same pod.

  3. Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds (from docker.io/documenso/documenso:${DOCUMENSO_VERSION}) and a rolling update replaces the pods. Prisma migrations run automatically on container start — there is no separate migrate job to run.

  4. Manage secrets, storage, and jobs:

    kubectl get secrets -n "$NS"
    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~documenso"
    kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"          # db-init job

  5. Wire a production signing certificate (recommended before real use): set secret_environment_variables to map NEXT_PRIVATE_SIGNING_LOCAL_FILE_CONTENTS (a base64-encoded .p12) and NEXT_PRIVATE_SIGNING_PASSPHRASE to secrets in Secret Manager, then apply via Update. Never regenerate NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_KEY in place afterward — it decrypts data already stored in Postgres; rotate only through the secondary-key slot.

  6. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

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

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]​

  1. Logs — from kubectl or the Logs Explorer:

    kubectl logs -n "$NS" deploy/"$(kubectl get deploy -n "$NS" -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')" --tail=50

    Logs Explorer filter: resource.type="k8s_container" AND resource.labels.namespace_name="<namespace>".

  2. Monitoring — open the GKE / Kubernetes dashboards and review pod CPU and memory utilisation, restart counts, and request metrics. The module can provision an uptime check (when enabled); review Monitoring → Uptime checks and 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 Documenso releases.

  • Pod not Ready / CrashLoopBackOff: inspect events and logs. The startup probe is HTTP GET / with a ~10-minute budget (cold start plus first-boot Prisma migrations count against it); the liveness probe is HTTP GET / with a 60s initial delay, so a healthy-but-slow first boot can still look like a restart if the budget is exceeded. 
    kubectl describe pod -n "$NS" <pod>          # Events section shows scheduling/probe/mount errors
    kubectl logs -n "$NS" <pod> --previous       # logs from the crashed container
  • Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret materialised into the namespace via the Secret Store CSI driver, and the db-init job completed. enable_cloudsql_volume defaults true on this module (the cloud-sql-proxy sidecar), which the entrypoint's connection logic expects — leave it enabled. 
    kubectl exec -n "$NS" deploy/<service-name> -- env | grep -E 'DATABASE_URL|WEBAPP_URL|SIGNING'
  • Initialisation job failed: inspect the job and its pod logs: 
    kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"
    kubectl logs -n "$NS" job/<db-init-job-name>
  • Pending pod / no external IP: check kubectl describe pod events for resource or quota issues, and confirm the Gateway/LoadBalancer Service has an assigned IP.
  • Image pull errors: confirm the image exists in Artifact Registry and the node service account can pull it.

See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls & Sensible Defaults section for setting-specific gotchas (including db_name/db_user immutability after first deploy, and never rotating NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_KEY in place).

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 Kubernetes workload and namespace, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, GCS buckets, Filestore instance, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, GKE cluster, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary​

TaskTypeOutcome
1 — DeployAutomatedModule deploys the GKE workload, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15), secrets, uploads bucket, Filestore, static IP/Gateway, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verifyManualConnect to the cluster; service responds; create the initial owner account in the UI; note the self-signed cert caveat
3 — OperateManualInspect workload, scale, update version, manage secrets/storage, wire a production signing cert, DB access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose pod, database, init-job, scheduling, and image-pull issues
6 — Tear downAutomatedDelete (Trash) removes all module resources

By · Google Cloud certified: ACE · PCA · PCD · PDE · PSE · CDL

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