Monica on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Monica is an open-source personal relationship management (PRM) application — a "personal CRM" for organising how you stay in touch with friends, family, and contacts. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Monica 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 Monica 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]

In the RAD platform, open Monica (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 (the Laravel APP_KEY and the database password), a Cloud Storage monica-uploads bucket, an NFS volume for Laravel's storage/ directory, builds nothing (the image is the official prebuilt monica:<version>), and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job. First deploys take roughly 15–25 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="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~monica" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(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 up. The startup probe is TCP on / (passes as soon as Apache binds the port); the liveness probe is HTTP GET /:
```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "$SERVICE_URL/"   # expect 200
```
Allow a generous window on first request after a cold start — Apache boot plus the entrypoint's php artisan migrate --force both run before the page serves.
Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser. Monica has no default credentials — an unauthenticated visitor is redirected to the registration/setup page. Register the first account (use admin@techequity.cloud for RAD deployments); it becomes the administrator. No further action is needed to disable open sign-up — verify this behaviour matches your intended access model before sharing the URL.

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). min_instance_count = 0 (the default) scales to zero between requests; set it to 1 to avoid cold-start + migration latency on a personal CRM you check often.
Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new revision rolls out pulling the new monica:<version> tag, and the entrypoint's php artisan migrate --force upgrades the schema automatically on the next boot.
Manage secrets and backups:
```
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~monica"
gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init job
```
Never rotate the APP_KEY secret after first boot — it is a Laravel encryption key, and rotating it permanently corrupts every encrypted database field and invalidates all sessions.

Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

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

Inspect uploaded files (contact photos/documents live under Laravel's storage/, persisted via NFS by default and mirrored to the monica-uploads bucket):
```
gcloud storage ls gs://<uploads-bucket>/
```

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 Monica 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 is TCP on / (passes as soon as Apache binds the port); the liveness probe is HTTP GET / with a generous delay for first-boot migrations.
```
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 successfully. Monica connects over the instance private IP by default (enable_cloudsql_volume = false) — no Auth Proxy socket, no SSL required.

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"

Uploaded files missing after a cold start: confirm enable_nfs = true — disabling NFS risks losing files written to Laravel's storage/ directory between cold starts.
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 critical rule never to rotate APP_KEY after first boot, and the immutability of db_name/db_user once set).

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 (MySQL 8.0), secrets, storage bucket, NFS, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Health check passes; create the initial admin account in the UI
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups, DB access, inspect uploads
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, database, init-job, and NFS/persistence 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​