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OpenProject on GKE Autopilot — 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 GKE Autopilot 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 GKE 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 workload, including the first-login password change.
  • Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and backups.
  • Observe the workload 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, GKE Autopilot cluster, Cloud SQL, Artifact Registry, and shared service accounts this module depends on).
  • A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
  • gcloud CLI and kubectl 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 OpenProject (GKE) 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 deploys the workload into the GKE Autopilot cluster, provisions 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). First deploys take roughly 25–40 minutes (Cloud SQL creation and the migration seed dominate).

  3. Connect to the cluster and discover the namespace with name-agnostic filters:

    CLUSTER=$(gcloud container clusters list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    gcloud container clusters get-credentials "$CLUSTER" --region="$REGION" --project="$PROJECT"

    NS=$(kubectl get ns -o name | grep openproject | head -1 | cut -d/ -f2)
    echo "Cluster: $CLUSTER   Namespace: $NS"
    kubectl get all -n "$NS"

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]​

  1. Confirm the workload is running and find its external address:

    kubectl get pods,svc -n "$NS"
    EXTERNAL_IP=$(kubectl get svc -n "$NS" \
      -o jsonpath='{.items[?(@.spec.type=="LoadBalancer")].status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
    echo "External IP: $EXTERNAL_IP"

  2. Confirm the service is healthy. OpenProject exposes a health endpoint that responds only when Rails is fully initialised and PostgreSQL is reachable (send it the external host so Rails Host Authorization accepts the Host header):

    curl -s "http://${EXTERNAL_IP}/health_checks/default"   # expect "PASSED" / HTTP 200

  3. Open http://${EXTERNAL_IP} 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. Then create your first project and confirm work packages, the wiki, and attachments work (attachments are written to the NFS mount, shared across pods).

Task 3 — Operate & keep it running (Day-2) [Manual]​

  1. Inspect the workload — deployment, pods, and the horizontal autoscaler:

    kubectl get deploy,pods,hpa,pvc,pdb -n "$NS"
    kubectl describe deploy -n "$NS"

  2. Scale by changing the min/max instance inputs and clicking Update on the deployment details page — the module owns the workload spec, so scaling is a configuration change, not a manual kubectl scale (a manual edit would be reverted on the next apply). Session affinity (ClientIP) keeps UI sessions stable, and a PodDisruptionBudget keeps pods serving through node upgrades. Note that NFS-backed rollouts use the Recreate strategy, so an update briefly takes the workload down while the old pod terminates before the new one starts.

  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 the pods are replaced. OpenProject publishes numeric major tags only — pin to a specific major (e.g. 16) rather than latest.

  4. Manage secrets, storage, and jobs:

    kubectl get secrets -n "$NS"
    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~openproject"
    kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"          # db-init, db-migrate, and any scheduled 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 kubectl or the Logs Explorer:

    kubectl logs -n "$NS" deploy/"$(kubectl get deploy -n "$NS" -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')" --tail=50

    Logs Explorer filter: resource.type="k8s_container" AND resource.labels.namespace_name="<namespace>".

  2. Monitoring — open the GKE / Kubernetes dashboards and review pod CPU and memory utilisation, restart counts, and request metrics. The module can provision an uptime check (when enabled); review Monitoring → Uptime checks and 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.

  • Pod not Ready / CrashLoopBackOff: inspect events and logs. Both the startup and liveness probes are TCP (Puma port-listening) — an HTTP probe would fail Rails Host Authorization (400 Invalid host_name), so do not switch them to HTTP. 
    kubectl describe pod -n "$NS" <pod>          # Events: scheduling/probe/mount errors
    kubectl logs -n "$NS" <pod> --previous       # logs from the crashed container
  • "You have N pending migrations" in logs: the db-migrate job did not complete. Inspect the job and its pod logs — the migrate job is self-verifying, so a real failure fails the apply loudly rather than shipping an empty DB. 
    kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"
    kubectl logs -n "$NS" job/<db-migrate-job-name>
  • Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret materialised into the namespace, the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar is running (enable_cloudsql_volume = true on GKE), and the init jobs completed.
  • Attachments disappear when a pod moves: confirm enable_nfs = true and that the Filestore instance and its PVC are healthy.
  • Pending pod / no external IP: check kubectl describe pod events for resource or quota issues, and confirm the LoadBalancer Service has an assigned IP.
  • Image pull errors: confirm the image exists in Artifact Registry and the node service account can pull it.

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 Kubernetes workload and namespace, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, Filestore instance, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, GKE cluster, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary​

TaskTypeOutcome
1 — DeployAutomatedModule deploys the GKE workload, 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 workload, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups, DB access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose pod, migration, database, NFS, IP, and image issues
6 — Tear downAutomatedDelete (Trash) removes all module resources

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

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