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Keycloak on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management platform providing single sign-on (SSO), OIDC, and SAML for your applications. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Keycloak 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 Keycloak 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 the Keycloak admin console with the Secret Manager bootstrap credential and verify the 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 Keycloak (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 (database password + bootstrap admin password), builds the production-optimized Keycloak container image with Cloud Build (kc.sh build → start --optimized), and runs a one-shot db-init job that creates the Keycloak database and role. Keycloak connects over TCP to the database's private IP (the JDBC driver cannot use the Cloud SQL socket). First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates).

  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="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~keycloak" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(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. The OIDC discovery document of the built-in master realm is public and proves Keycloak is up and talking to its database (allow 60–120 seconds for a JVM cold start if the service scaled to zero):

    curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" \
      "$SERVICE_URL/realms/master/.well-known/openid-configuration"   # expect 200
    curl -s "$SERVICE_URL/realms/master/.well-known/openid-configuration" | head -c 300

    Note: Keycloak's /health endpoint lives on the management port 9000, which Cloud Run does not expose — the discovery document is the correct external check.

  2. Open ${SERVICE_URL}/admin in a browser to reach the admin console. Log in with the bootstrap admin — username admin, password from Secret Manager:

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

  3. Immediate hardening: the bootstrap admin is temporary by design. In the admin console create a permanent administrator (Users → Add user, assign the admin role), sign in as that user, then delete or disable the bootstrap admin user.

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). For a production IdP set min_instance_count = 1: with 0, the first SSO redirect after idle waits out a 60–120 s JVM cold start.

  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. Never downgrade — Keycloak schema migrations are one-way.

  4. Manage secrets, jobs, and backups:

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

  5. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance (Keycloak keeps all realms, clients, and users in PostgreSQL):

    INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    DB_USER=$(gcloud sql users list --instance="$INSTANCE" --project="$PROJECT" \
      --format="value(name)" --filter="name~keycloak" --limit=1)
    gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user="$DB_USER" --project="$PROJECT"

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

  1. Logs — from the CLI or the Logs Explorer. The entrypoint prints a configuration summary (KC_DB_URL, KC_HOSTNAME, proxy settings) at every start:

    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 (watch memory — Keycloak is a JVM). The uptime check is disabled by default; enable uptime_check_config (path /) via Update and confirm it is green under Monitoring → Uptime checks.

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 Keycloak releases.

  • Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: the startup probe is TCP on 8080 with a ~330-second budget for JVM start + first-boot schema migrations. Inspect the latest revision and its logs before concluding the service has failed: 
    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 (PostgreSQL 15) instance is RUNNABLE, the db-init job completed, and the entrypoint log shows a KC_DB_URL pointing at the private IP. Keycloak connects over TCP — enable_cloudsql_volume must stay false (the JDBC driver cannot use the Cloud SQL Unix socket), and vpc_egress_setting must allow private-range egress.
  • 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"
  • Image build failed: review Cloud Build history for the failed build's log. container_image_source must be custom — the upstream image lacks the entrypoint that maps DB credentials and detects the hostname.
  • 403 / permission errors: verify the runtime service account's IAM roles.
  • App-specific — OIDC redirects go to the wrong host: the entrypoint auto-detects the run.app URL as KC_HOSTNAME. If you front Keycloak with a load balancer or custom domain, set KC_HOSTNAME explicitly in environment_variables so issuer URLs and login redirects match the hostname users actually visit. (A 404 on ${SERVICE_URL}/health is not a failure — health lives on the unexposed management port 9000.)

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 (bootstrap admin + database password), and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary​

TaskTypeOutcome
1 — DeployAutomatedModule provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15), secrets, builds the optimized image, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verifyManualOIDC discovery returns 200; bootstrap admin login; permanent admin created
3 — OperateManualInspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups, DB access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose revision, database, init-job, build, IAM, and hostname issues
6 — Tear downAutomatedDelete (Trash) removes all module resources

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

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