PhpMyAdmin on GKE Autopilot — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

phpMyAdmin is the most popular open-source web tool for administering MySQL and MariaDB databases over the browser — browse and edit tables, run SQL, manage users, and import/export data. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the phpMyAdmin 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.

Unlike most modules in this repository, phpMyAdmin does not own or provision a database — it is a client that connects to a MySQL/MariaDB server that already exists elsewhere (the platform's shared Cloud SQL instance, another Cloud SQL instance, or any reachable host). "Deploying" phpMyAdmin means standing up the web UI and its connectivity path to that external server, not creating new data storage.

The lab focuses on operating the GKE module and the Google Cloud platform, not on phpMyAdmin 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.
Connect to the GKE cluster and access the running phpMyAdmin workload.
Confirm which MySQL/MariaDB server phpMyAdmin is configured to target.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update the version, and pin or widen the MySQL target.
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 — and, if you want phpMyAdmin to administer it, the platform's shared MySQL instance).
A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
gcloud CLI and kubectl installed; gcloud auth login and gcloud auth application-default login completed.
Project Owner (or equivalent) IAM on the project.
RAD platform access with permission to deploy modules into the project.
Access to (or credentials for) a MySQL/MariaDB server you intend to administer — phpMyAdmin creates no database of its own.

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]

Click Deploy in the RAD platform top navigation, open PhpMyAdmin (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. Decide up front whether you want pma_arbitrary = "1" (default — users type any MySQL host at login) or a fixed pma_host with pma_arbitrary = "0" (single pinned server, e.g. the platform's Cloud SQL private IP). Review the estimated cost (if credits are enabled) and click Deploy, which opens the deployment status page with real-time logs.
The platform builds the thin custom container image (FROM phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin), mirrors it into Artifact Registry, and deploys the workload into the GKE Autopilot cluster as a stateless Deployment (no StatefulSet — phpMyAdmin keeps no per-pod state) behind an external LoadBalancer Service. There is no Cloud SQL instance, no Secret Manager secret, and no database-initialisation job — phpMyAdmin provisions no data store of its own. First deploys typically take only 5–10 minutes (image build plus scheduling and LoadBalancer provisioning — none of the Cloud SQL provisioning time other application modules incur).

Connect to the cluster and discover the namespace with a name-agnostic filter:

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 phpmyadmin | head -1 | cut -d/ -f2)
echo "Cluster: $CLUSTER   Namespace: $NS"
kubectl get all -n "$NS"

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]

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"

Confirm the workload is up. phpMyAdmin serves its login page at / with a 200 as soon as Apache/PHP is ready — there is no database-connectivity dependency to wait on, since phpMyAdmin holds no database of its own:
```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "http://${EXTERNAL_IP}/"   # expect 200
```
Confirm which MySQL/MariaDB server phpMyAdmin is configured to target by inspecting the injected PMA_* env vars on the running pod:
```
kubectl exec -n "$NS" deploy/"$(kubectl get deploy -n "$NS" -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')" \
  -- env | grep PMA_
```
Open http://${EXTERNAL_IP} in a browser.
- If PMA_ARBITRARY = "1" (default), the login page shows a server-input box — type the MySQL/MariaDB host, then your username and password for that server.
- If a fixed pma_host is set (PMA_ARBITRARY = "0"), only username and password are shown, scoped to that one server. In both cases, authenticate with the target MySQL server's own account — phpMyAdmin has no admin account of its own to create, and stores nothing between requests beyond the session cookie.
To administer the platform's shared Cloud SQL MySQL instance, first find its private IP:
```
gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="databaseVersion~MYSQL"
gcloud sql instances describe <instance-name> --project="$PROJECT" \
  --format='value(ipAddresses[0].ipAddress)'
```
Enter that IP as the server (arbitrary mode) or confirm it matches the configured pma_host (pinned mode). Pods reach a private-IP MySQL server directly over the cluster's VPC networking — no Auth Proxy sidecar is used (enable_cloudsql_volume = false, since phpMyAdmin doesn't use the platform's own Cloud SQL integration).

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

Inspect the workload — deployment, pods, and the horizontal autoscaler:
```
kubectl get deploy,pods,hpa -n "$NS"
kubectl describe deploy -n "$NS"
```
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). Unlike the Cloud Run variant, GKE has no scale-to-zero, so min_instance_count defaults to 1 — keep it at least 1 so the console stays reachable.
Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds and a rolling update replaces the pods. Because phpMyAdmin holds no schema and no cryptographic keys, rolling updates and version bumps carry none of the migration/key-rotation risk other stateful modules have, and because the Deployment is stateless (no stateful_pvc_enabled), pods share no volume or lock to deadlock on.
Re-point or widen the MySQL target by changing pma_host / pma_arbitrary / pma_port in the RAD platform and applying Update — no data migration is involved since phpMyAdmin owns no data.
Manage ingress and access control — because phpMyAdmin grants full database administration to anyone who reaches it with valid MySQL credentials, review service_type (external LoadBalancer by default) and consider ClusterIP behind an IAP-gated Ingress before leaving it running:
```
kubectl get svc,ingress -n "$NS"
```

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]

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>".
Monitoring — open the GKE / Kubernetes dashboards and review pod CPU and memory utilisation and restart counts. 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 phpMyAdmin releases.

Pod not Ready / CrashLoopBackOff: inspect events and logs. The startup probe targets / with a short initial delay (10s) and up to ~6 retries at a 10s period — phpMyAdmin boots in a few seconds, so a probe failure almost always points at the container itself, not a slow dependency (it has none).
```
kubectl describe pod -n "$NS" <pod>          # Events section shows scheduling/probe/mount errors
kubectl logs -n "$NS" <pod> --previous       # logs from the crashed container
```
Login page loads but every login fails: this is a MySQL-side credential or reachability problem, not a phpMyAdmin or GKE issue — phpMyAdmin stores no credentials of its own. Confirm the target host is correct, the account exists on that MySQL server, and the account's host-grants (user@host) allow a connection from the cluster's node/pod IP range.
"Cannot connect" / timeout at login: confirm the target MySQL server's private IP is correct and reachable from the cluster's VPC, and that its firewall rules or authorized networks allow the cluster's range. Since enable_cloudsql_volume = false, there is no Auth Proxy sidecar in the pod to check — connectivity is direct.
Wrong or unexpected MySQL host offered at login: re-check the injected PMA_* env vars on the running pod — a stale pod from a prior rollout may still be serving traffic:
```
kubectl exec -n "$NS" deploy/<service-name> -- env | grep PMA_
```
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 & Sensible Defaults section for setting-specific gotchas (including why an unauthenticated external LoadBalancer without IAP is a Critical-risk misconfiguration for a database-admin tool, why database_type other than NONE is blocked by a plan-time validation guard, and why PMA_ARBITRARY = "1" widens the blast radius of a compromised session).

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, the LoadBalancer Service, and the Artifact Registry image. Because phpMyAdmin provisions no database, no Secret Manager secrets, and no storage bucket of its own, there is nothing else for this module to clean up — the MySQL/MariaDB server it was pointed at is not touched (it is owned elsewhere, typically by Services_GCP or another application module). Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, GKE cluster, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module builds/mirrors the image and deploys the GKE workload + LoadBalancer only — no database, secrets, or storage bucket are created
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Connect to the cluster; login page returns 200; confirm the configured MySQL target; authenticate with that server's own credentials
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect workload, scale (min 1, no scale-to-zero on GKE), update version, re-point the MySQL target, review ingress/IAP
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose pod, MySQL-connectivity, scheduling/LB, and image-pull issues
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes the workload, namespace, and image; the external MySQL server is unaffected

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​