NetBox on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 60–90 minutes

NetBox is the industry-standard open-source network and infrastructure documentation / IPAM (IP address management) tool — device and rack inventory, IP address and prefix tracking, cabling, and network topology, modeled as structured data behind a full API. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the NetBox 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 NetBox 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, including confirming media uploads actually persist to Cloud Storage.
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, including Redis/background-worker misconfiguration.
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 NetBox (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, SUPERUSER_PASSWORD, and the database password), a Cloud Storage media bucket, builds the custom container image (wrapping netboxcommunity/netbox), and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job. 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="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~netbox" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(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. NetBox's public login page responds only once the server is fully initialised and PostgreSQL is reachable:
```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' "$SERVICE_URL/login/"   # expect 200
```

Open $SERVICE_URL/login/ in a browser. Retrieve the auto-generated admin credentials and log in:

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

Verify media uploads actually persist — this exercises the exact code path this module needed a real fix for. In the NetBox UI, upload an image attachment to any object (e.g. add an image attachment to a device or site), then confirm it landed in the backing GCS bucket, not just the container's local disk:
```
MEDIA_BUCKET=$(gcloud storage buckets list --project="$PROJECT" \
  --filter="name~media" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
gcloud storage ls "gs://$MEDIA_BUCKET/"
```
You should see the uploaded file within a few seconds. If the bucket is empty despite a successful-looking upload in the UI, see Task 5.

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). Note that NetBox's background RQ worker (webhooks, reports, scripts, scheduled jobs) is co-located in the same container and only runs while an instance is warm under the default cost-first (cpu_always_allocated = false, min_instance_count = 0) scaling — set cpu_always_allocated = true and min_instance_count >= 1 together to keep it continuously active.
Update the application version tag by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds (passing application_version through as the Dockerfile's APPLICATION_VERSION build ARG) and a new revision rolls out.

Manage secrets and backups:

gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~netbox"
gcloud run jobs list --project="$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 "$INSTANCE" --user=netbox --project="$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 can provision an uptime check (uptime_check_config.enabled = true, defaults to true with path = "/login/"); 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 NetBox 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 /login/ and allows up to 60 retries at 10-second intervals 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
```
Login fails with a CSRF error: the service's CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS must match its actual URL. Confirm:
```
gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" --region="$REGION" --project="$PROJECT" \
  --format='value(status.url)'
```
If this doesn't match the URL you're browsing to, the deployment is misconfigured — re-check the service_url wiring rather than assuming a browser-side cookie issue.
Uploads "succeed" in the UI but never show up in the GCS bucket: this is the exact class of bug this module was fixed for once already — a GCS Fuse volume mounted at the wrong path leaves uploads on the ephemeral container filesystem, where they read back fine (fooling a quick UI check) but vanish on the next revision/restart. Confirm the mount path is NetBox's real MEDIA_ROOT (/etc/netbox/media, not /opt/netbox/netbox/media) and check the bucket directly rather than trusting the UI alone:
```
gcloud storage ls "gs://$MEDIA_BUCKET/"
```
Webhooks / reports / scheduled jobs never run: NetBox's background RQ worker only executes while an instance is warm under the default cost-first scaling. Set cpu_always_allocated = true and min_instance_count >= 1 if continuous background processing is required.
Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret exists, and the initialisation job completed successfully.

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.
403 / permission errors: verify the runtime service account's IAM roles.

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, 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, media bucket, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Health check passes; log in with the auto-generated admin credential; confirm media uploads land in GCS
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, CSRF, media-persistence, background-worker, database, init-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​