GlitchTip on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

GlitchTip is an open-source, Sentry-compatible error-tracking and performance-monitoring platform. Your applications send exceptions and traces to its ingest endpoint, and GlitchTip stores, groups, and alerts on them. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the GlitchTip 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 GlitchTip 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 and sign in as the seeded administrator.
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]

In the RAD platform, open GlitchTip (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 (PostgreSQL 15) database with its Secret Manager secrets (SECRET_KEY, the initial superuser password, and the database password), a Cloud Storage data bucket and NFS attachment storage, builds the thin custom container image (FROM glitchtip/glitchtip:6.2.0), and runs two one-shot jobs — db-init (database/user) then glitchtip-migrate (Django migrations + superuser creation). First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates).

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="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~glitchtip" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(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 healthy. GlitchTip exposes an unauthenticated health endpoint that returns 200 once the server is up and PostgreSQL is reachable:
```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "$SERVICE_URL/_health/"   # expect 200
```

Retrieve the seeded administrator password (the glitchtip-migrate job created admin@techequity.cloud from this secret):

PW_SECRET=$(gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" \
  --filter="name~superuser-password" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret="$PW_SECRET" --project="$PROJECT"

Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser and log in as admin@techequity.cloud with that password. Create your first organization and project, and copy the project's DSN to point an application's Sentry SDK at GlitchTip. Self-service signup is disabled by default; leave enable_open_user_registration = false unless you want open registration.

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 — 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). Keep min_instance_count ≥ 1: the Celery worker and beat run in-process (SERVER_ROLE = all_in_one), so scaling to zero would stop background event processing.
Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds, migrations run on start, and a new revision rolls out.

Manage secrets and backups:

gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~glitchtip"
gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # init + scheduled backup jobs

Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

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

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]

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>".
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 GlitchTip releases.

Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors, and confirm env vars and secrets resolved. The startup probe targets /_health/ and allows several minutes on first boot while migrations run.
```
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, the DB password secret exists, and the db-init job completed. The entrypoint composes DATABASE_URL from the injected DB_* vars — on Cloud Run this is the Cloud SQL socket form.

Migration / superuser job failed: list executions and read the failed one's logs:

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

Empty dashboard / cannot log in: confirm glitchtip-migrate ran createsuperuser; the admin is admin@techequity.cloud with the Secret Manager superuser password.
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 keeping min_instance_count ≥ 1 and never renaming db_name/db_user).

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. Delete 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), secrets, storage, and runs `db-init` + `glitchtip-migrate`
2 — Access & verify	Manual	`/_health/` returns 200; log in as the seeded `admin@techequity.cloud`
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, database, migrate-job, build, and IAM 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​