Rallly on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Rallly is an open-source, self-hosted meeting-scheduling and group-poll application — a privacy-friendly alternative to Doodle — built with Next.js and Prisma. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Rallly 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 Rallly 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 SMTP settings.
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]

In the RAD platform, open Rallly (Cloud Run), set project_id, and review the inputs. Configure only what you need — the Configuration Guide documents every input by group, with defaults. If you already have an SMTP relay, set smtp_user and smtp_password now (the default smtp_host is smtp.gmail.com) so email login works from the first boot. 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, a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) database with its Secret Manager secrets (SECRET_PASSWORD, NEXTAUTH_SECRET, an optional SMTP_PWD, and the database password), builds the container image, and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job that creates the empty database and role. First deploys take roughly 15–25 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates).

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="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~rallly" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(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 fully ready — database migrated and reachable. Rallly's own status endpoint only returns 2xx once the app has finished the first-boot Prisma migration and confirmed its dependencies (this is a stricter check than the platform's own TCP startup probe, which only confirms the port is bound):
```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' "$SERVICE_URL/api/status"   # expect 200
```
Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser. Rallly's login is passwordless and email-based — there is no pre-seeded admin account. Enter your email on the sign-in page; Rallly emails a verification link/code through the configured SMTP relay. If nothing arrives, confirm SMTP is actually configured (Task 3, step 4) before assuming the deployment is broken.
If you plan to front the service with a custom domain, set base_url to that domain and apply via Update so invite and login links resolve to the address users actually visit, rather than the raw run.app URL.

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"

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). Rallly keeps all state in PostgreSQL, so it scales horizontally without any shared cache or filesystem.
Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds and a new revision rolls out. Rallly's own ./docker-start.sh runs prisma migrate deploy on every boot, so schema migrations apply automatically — no separate migration step is required.

Manage secrets and SMTP:

gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~rallly"
gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" --region="$REGION" \
  --format='value(spec.template.spec.containers[0].env)'   # confirm SMTP_* / base URL env

Never rotate SECRET_PASSWORD or NEXTAUTH_SECRET outside of a planned maintenance window — see Task 5.

Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

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

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), instance count (scaling behaviour), and CPU / memory utilisation. The module can provision 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 Rallly 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 by design (not /api/status, which only returns 2xx at full application readiness) and allows roughly 230 seconds of budget (30s initial delay
- 10 retries at 20s) to cover the first-boot Prisma migration.
```
gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
```
Users cannot sign in: Rallly's login is passwordless and email-based. Confirm smtp_user / smtp_password are set (default smtp_host = smtp.gmail.com is not enough on its own) and check the running revision's env vars for SMTP_*.
Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret exists, and the initialisation 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"

Invite/login links point at the wrong host: set base_url to your custom domain — otherwise NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL / NEXTAUTH_URL default to the raw run.app URL.
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_PASSWORD or NEXTAUTH_SECRET after first boot, and the db_name/db_user immutability rule).

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, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15), secrets, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Status endpoint returns 200; sign in via emailed verification link
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/SMTP, DB access
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, database, init-job, SMTP, and build issues
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes all module resources

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​