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OpenProject on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

OpenProject is an open-source project-management and collaboration suite — work packages, Gantt timelines, agile boards, wikis, time tracking, and budgets. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the OpenProject 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 OpenProject 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 the first-login password change.
  • 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. In the RAD platform, open OpenProject (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.

  2. The platform provisions the Cloud Run service, a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) database with its Secret Manager secrets (SECRET_KEY_BASE and the database password), a Cloud Filestore NFS instance for attachment storage, builds the container image, and runs the two initialization jobs — db-init (role + database) then db-migrate (rake db:migrate db:seed, which builds the schema and seeds the default admin). First deploys take roughly 25–40 minutes (Cloud SQL creation and the migration seed dominate).

  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="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~openproject" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(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 and connected to its database. OpenProject exposes a health endpoint that responds only when Rails is fully initialised and PostgreSQL is reachable (query it on the service URL so the Host header is accepted by Rails Host Authorization):

    curl -s "$SERVICE_URL/health_checks/default"   # expect "PASSED" / HTTP 200

  2. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser. Sign in with the seeded credentials admin / admin — OpenProject immediately forces you to set a new admin password. Set a strong one and store it in your password manager. After that, create your first project and confirm work packages, the wiki, and attachments work (attachments are written to the NFS mount).

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 OpenProject keeps cpu_always_allocated = true and min_instance_count = 1 by default so the in-process good_job worker and cron keep running between requests.

  3. Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds, the db-migrate job runs any new migrations, and a new revision rolls out. OpenProject publishes numeric major tags only — pin to a specific major (e.g. 16) rather than latest.

  4. Manage secrets and backups:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~openproject"
    gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init, db-migrate, 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 "$INSTANCE" --user=openproject --project="$PROJECT"

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.

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 OpenProject 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 (Puma port-listening) — an HTTP probe would fail Rails Host Authorization, so do not switch it to HTTP. 
    gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
    gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
  • "You have N pending migrations" in logs: the db-migrate job did not complete. List its executions and read the failed one's logs — the migrate job is self-verifying, so a real failure fails the apply loudly rather than shipping an empty DB. 
    gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-db-migrate" \
      --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
  • Database connection errors (connection refused / SSL required): confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret exists, and — because Cloud Run connects over private-IP TCP with sslmode=require — that enable_cloudsql_volume is left at its false default (enabling the socket breaks the Rails URL DSN).
  • Attachments disappear after a redeploy: confirm enable_nfs = true and that the Filestore instance is healthy — without NFS, attachments land on ephemeral disk.
  • 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 the critical rule never to rotate SECRET_KEY_BASE after first boot).

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, Filestore instance, 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, Filestore, and runs db-init + db-migrate
2 — Access & verifyManualHealth check passes; sign in as admin/admin and set a new password
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, migration, database, NFS, build, and IAM issues
6 — Tear downAutomatedDelete (Trash) removes all module resources

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

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