PocketBase on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

PocketBase is an open-source backend in a single file — an embedded SQLite database with a realtime REST API, built-in authentication, file storage, and an admin dashboard. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the PocketBase 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 PocketBase 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, and claim the first-run admin account.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, back up, and update the deployment.
Understand why this module is single-instance and why that must not change.
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, 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 PocketBase (Cloud Run), set project_id, and review the inputs. Configure only what you need — the Configuration Guide documents every input by group, with defaults. Leave max_instance_count at 1 — the embedded SQLite database and its GCS FUSE mount are single-writer, and raising it corrupts the database. 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 (gen2, port 8090), a Cloud Storage data bucket mounted at /pb_data via GCS FUSE, and builds the container image. There is no Cloud SQL instance and no database-initialisation job — PocketBase creates its own SQLite schema on first start. First deploys typically complete in 5–15 minutes, much faster than a Cloud-SQL-backed module.

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="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~pocketbase" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(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. PocketBase exposes a public, unauthenticated health endpoint that returns as soon as the binary is up — there is no external database to wait on:
```
curl -s "$SERVICE_URL/api/health"   # expect {"code":200,"message":"API is healthy."}
```
Open $SERVICE_URL/_/ in a browser immediately. On first visit, whoever reaches /_/ first is prompted to create the administrator (superuser) account — no admin credential is pre-seeded in Secret Manager, and until the account is claimed anyone with the URL can claim it. Fill in an email and password and finish the setup wizard. Afterwards, sign in to the admin dashboard and browse the default collections to confirm the database initialised correctly.

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"

Do not scale beyond one instance. min_instance_count and max_instance_count both default to 1 and the RAD platform enforces this deliberately — SQLite is single-writer and the /pb_data GCS FUSE mount is not safe for concurrent writers. If you need more capacity, increase cpu_limit / memory_limit on the single instance rather than raising instance counts.
Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update. PocketBase applies any pending schema migrations automatically on the next start, so back up /pb_data (step 4) before bumping the version — an interrupted upgrade can leave the database mid-migration.

Back up /pb_data — the Cloud Storage bucket is the entire database and file store:

BUCKET=$(gcloud storage buckets list --project="$PROJECT" \
  --filter="name~pocketbase AND name~storage" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
gcloud storage ls "gs://$BUCKET/"
gcloud storage cp "gs://$BUCKET/data.db" ./pb_data-backup.db
gcloud storage rsync "gs://$BUCKET/" ./pb_data-backup/ --recursive   # full backup incl. uploads

Manage your own secrets (only relevant if you added SMTP or external backup credentials — PocketBase auto-generates none):
```
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~pocketbase"
```

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), and CPU / memory utilisation. Instance count should stay flat at 1. The uptime check is disabled by default; enable uptime_check_config if you want alerting on availability, then confirm it under Monitoring → Uptime checks.

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 PocketBase releases.

Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors. The startup and liveness probes target /api/health, which needs no external dependency, so a failure here almost always points to a container-level problem (bad image, missing env var, port mismatch) rather than a database issue.
```
gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
```
Data appears missing or reset: confirm the service is mounting the expected GCS bucket (not a fresh/empty one) and that execution_environment = gen2 — gen1 cannot mount the GCS FUSE volume, so the service silently starts with no persistent /pb_data.
Can't reach /_/ or someone else claimed the admin account: there is no reset mechanism from the platform side; use the PocketBase CLI/API against the running instance, or restore from a pre-claim backup of the data bucket if this happened on a fresh deploy.
Image build failed: review Cloud Build history for the failed build's log.
403 / permission errors: verify the runtime service account's IAM roles, and check whether enable_iap is accidentally enabled — IAP blocks the public admin UI and REST API.

See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls section for setting-specific gotchas (including why max_instance_count must never be raised and why execution_environment must stay gen2).

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, the GCS data bucket (which is the entire SQLite database and uploaded files — back it up first if you need to keep it), and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Artifact Registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module provisions the Cloud Run service (gen2) and its GCS data bucket; no Cloud SQL, no init job
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Health check passes; claim the first-run admin account at `/_/` immediately
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, keep instance count at 1, back up `/pb_data`, update version
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and (optional) uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, storage-mount, admin-claim, build, and IAM issues
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes the service and the GCS bucket that holds all data

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​