Nextcloud on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Nextcloud is an open-source self-hosted file sync and collaboration platform. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Nextcloud 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 Nextcloud 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, 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

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Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]

1. Click Deploy in the RAD platform top navigation, open Nextcloud (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 (MySQL 8.0) database with its Secret Manager secrets, a Filestore NFS share for shared config and user data, an optional Redis endpoint, builds the container image, and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job. First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates). Note that Nextcloud also runs occ maintenance:install synchronously on the very first container start — the startup probe allows up to 10 minutes for this to complete before traffic is routed.

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="$REGION" \
     --filter="metadata.name~nextcloud" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
   SERVICE_URL=$(gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" \
     --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --format="value(status.url)")
   echo "Service: $SERVICE"
   echo "URL:     $SERVICE_URL"

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Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]

1. Confirm the service is healthy and Nextcloud is installed:

   curl -s "$SERVICE_URL/status.php"   # expect {"installed":true,"maintenance":false,...}

   If "installed": false, Nextcloud is still running its first-boot setup — wait 60 seconds and retry.

2. Retrieve the admin password from Secret Manager and sign in at ${SERVICE_URL}:

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

   The admin username defaults to admin (configurable via nextcloud_admin_user at deploy time). Nextcloud's own product documentation covers Files, Calendar, Contacts, and the OCS API.

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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). Note that Nextcloud requires Redis and NFS when max_instance_count > 1 to prevent file-locking errors across concurrent instances.

3. Update the application version by changing the application_version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds and a new revision rolls out.

4. Manage secrets and backups:

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

5. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

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

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Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]

1. 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>".

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. The module also provisions an uptime check; confirm it is green under Monitoring → Uptime checks, and review Alerting → Policies.

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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 Nextcloud releases.

• Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors, and confirm env vars and secrets resolved.

  gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
  gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100

• First-boot timeout / occ maintenance:install still running: the startup probe allows up to 10 minutes; check the revision logs for progress. If the Cloud SQL instance was just created, the first install can take several minutes on a cold instance — wait and retry rather than applying it via Update immediately.
• Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret exists and was injected, and the db-init 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"

• "File is locked" HTTP 503 errors: this occurs when multiple instances share writes without a Redis lock backend. Confirm enable_redis = true and that the Redis host is reachable.
• "Access through untrusted domain" error: the hostname used to reach Nextcloud is not in NEXTCLOUD_TRUSTED_DOMAINS. Add it to application_domains and apply it via Update.
• 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.

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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, Filestore NFS share, 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.

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Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (MySQL 8.0), Filestore NFS, secrets, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Health check at /status.php passes; sign in with admin credentials from Secret Manager
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, first-boot, database, file-locking, init-job, build, and IAM issues
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes all module resources