EspoCRM on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

EspoCRM is an open-source, GPLv3-licensed Customer Relationship Management platform built on PHP and Apache. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the EspoCRM 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 EspoCRM product features (contacts, leads, opportunities, workflows). 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 the CRM, retrieve the auto-generated admin credential, and verify the service is healthy and connected to its database.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets, NFS storage, and the database.
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, Filestore NFS, 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]

In the RAD platform, open EspoCRM (Cloud Run), 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.
The platform provisions the Cloud Run service, a Cloud SQL (MySQL 8.0) database with its Secret Manager secrets (ESPOCRM_ADMIN_PASSWORD and the database password), a espocrm-data Cloud Storage bucket (provisioned but not mounted by default), a shared Filestore NFS volume mounted at /var/lib/espocrm for uploads (enable_nfs = true by default), builds the container image, and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job. The upstream EspoCRM installer then runs its own install/migrate step automatically on first container boot. First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL and Filestore creation dominate).

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="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~espocrm" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(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]

Confirm the service is serving its login page (EspoCRM's liveness endpoint is the unauthenticated login screen at /, 200 once the install/migrate step has finished — allow several minutes on first boot):
```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "$SERVICE_URL/"   # expect 200
```
Retrieve the auto-generated administrator password from Secret Manager — EspoCRM's installer creates the admin user with this password on first boot, there is no separate account-creation step:
```
gcloud secrets versions access latest \
  --secret="secret-<resource_prefix>-espocrm-admin-password" --project="$PROJECT"
```
Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser and log in as admin with the retrieved password. Change the password immediately under Administration → Users — the auto-generated value only seeds the first install; losing it later requires a database-level reset.

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

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"

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). max_instance_count defaults to 1: Cloud Run has no built-in session affinity, so verify EspoCRM's behaviour under concurrent PHP sessions across replicas before scaling beyond one instance.
Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds and a new revision rolls out.

Manage secrets and NFS storage:

gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~espocrm"
gcloud filestore instances list --project="$PROJECT"   # backs /var/lib/espocrm uploads
gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init job

Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

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

Enable Redis (optional) to offload EspoCRM's object cache from MySQL: set enable_redis = true and apply via Update; leave redis_host empty to reuse the NFS server's IP as the Redis endpoint.

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]

Logs — from the CLI or the Logs Explorer. The container prints its resolved ESPOCRM_DATABASE_* and ESPOCRM_SITE_URL values at startup, a quick way to confirm the DB host and site URL in use:
```
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>".
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 EspoCRM releases.

Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors. The startup probe is TCP on port 80; the liveness probe is HTTP GET / with a 300-second initial delay to allow the install/migrate step to finish on first boot.
```
gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
```
Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, and that the db-init job completed — EspoCRM connects over private-IP TCP (not a socket) by default, so VPC egress must reach the instance's private IP.

Initialisation job failed: list executions and read the failed one's logs:

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

Uploads missing after a restart: confirm enable_nfs = true and the Filestore instance is healthy — without NFS, attachments live on ephemeral container disk and are lost when an instance is recycled.
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 (including the immutability of db_name/db_user after first deploy and the one-time-only nature of the auto-generated admin password).

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, the Filestore NFS instance, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (MySQL 8.0), secrets, storage bucket + NFS mount, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Login page returns 200; retrieve the auto-generated admin password and log in
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/NFS, DB access, optional Redis
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, database, init-job, NFS, and build issues
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes all module resources

By Dr Shiyghan Emmanuel Navti · Google Cloud certified: ACE · PCA · PCD · PDE · PSE · CDL

Overview​

Objectives​

Prerequisites​

Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]​

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]​

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

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

Task 5 — Troubleshoot & debug [Manual]​

Task 6 — Tear down [Automated]​

Summary​