SimpleRisk on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–60 minutes

SimpleRisk is an open-source governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platform — a risk register with scoring, mitigation planning, management reviews and an audit history. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the SimpleRisk 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 SimpleRisk 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 the running service and create the SimpleRisk administrator account.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets, storage 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 (provides the VPC, Cloud SQL for MySQL, Artifact Registry, and shared service accounts this module depends on). You do not need to deploy this yourself first — the platform automatically detects whether it already exists in the target project and provisions it before this module if not (see Task 1).
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.
Bringing your own project? Before the first deploy into it, the deployment confirmation dialog asks you to prove you control it (Get verification code, run the commands it shows as a project Owner, then Verify) and to give the RAD deployment service account the Owner role. A project RAD creates for you needs neither.
Advanced mode for later changes. The create form asks only for the first page of inputs (and, in a project RAD creates for you, little more than the tenant name and region). Every other input in the Configuration Guide — including the scaling and version inputs in the Day-2 tasks — is changed afterwards with Update on the deployment's page after ticking Enable advanced mode, which needs a credit balance that covers the update's estimated build cost (updates never carry a module fee). On a lab environment only an administrator can use Advanced mode.
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 Solutions → Solution Catalog → RAD modules, then open SimpleRisk (Cloud Run) from the Platform Modules list, choose Configuration Form under How would you like to configure this deployment? (the form opens on the Conversational Assistant if you hold purchased credits or are a partner or administrator), set project_id, and review the inputs. Configure only what you need — the Configuration Guide documents every input by group, with defaults. Click Deploy Module, review the estimated cost in the Deployment Confirmation dialog when it appears and click Submit (if the dialog then adds a confirmation step, such as verifying a project you bring, complete it and click Confirm), which opens the deployment status page with real-time logs.
The platform provisions the Cloud Run service, a Cloud SQL (MySQL 8.0) database and its password secret, a storage bucket mounted with GCS FUSE at /var/www/simplerisk/files, builds the wrapper container image, and runs the two-stage initialization chain: db-init (creates the database, user and grants) followed by schema-load (loads SimpleRisk's schema into the empty database). First deploys take roughly 15–25 minutes (Cloud SQL creation and the image build dominate).

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="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~simplerisk" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(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 answers on its URL:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "$SERVICE_URL/"

Create the administrator account straight away. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser. SimpleRisk ships no default credentials — on first access it shows a Default Admin Account Creation form, and whoever submits it becomes the administrator. The service is public by default, so do this as soon as the deployment finishes. (To keep the URL private while you work, set ingress_settings = "internal-and-cloud-load-balancing" or enable_iap = true — see the Configuration Guide.)
Log in with the account you created and add a test risk. Then confirm the schema really is in Cloud SQL — schema-load reports the table count it found or loaded:
```
gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --filter="metadata.name~simplerisk"
gcloud logging read \
  'resource.type="cloud_run_job" AND textPayload:"tables"' \
  --project="$PROJECT" --limit=5 --format="value(textPayload)"
```
Expect a line such as Schema loaded: 154 tables in ... on the first deploy, or Schema already present ... -- nothing to do on later applies.

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). Sessions are stored in the database, so more than one instance is safe.
Update the application version by changing application_version to another dated SimpleRisk tag and applying it via Update; a new image builds FROM simplerisk/simplerisk:<version> and a new revision rolls out. Always change the tag — rebuilding under the same tag produces no new revision.

Manage secrets, storage and backups:

gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~simplerisk"
gcloud storage buckets list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" | grep -i simplerisk
gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # init + scheduled backup jobs

Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
# Role and database are tenant-prefixed (e.g. simpleriskdemo426161cf) — not the bare app name.
DB_USER=$(gcloud sql users list --instance="$INSTANCE" --project="$PROJECT" \
  --format="value(name)" --filter="name~^simplerisk" --limit=1)
gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user="$DB_USER" --project="$PROJECT"

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]

Logs — from the CLI or the Logs Explorer. Each container start logs the database it rendered into config.php (config.php rendered against Cloud SQL at ...):
```
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, instance count (scaling behaviour), and CPU / memory utilisation. An uptime check is created only when it is enabled and min_instance_count is at least 1; if so, 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 SimpleRisk releases.

Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs. The entrypoint exits with DB_IP is not set (or DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD) when a database variable is missing — check that db_host_env_var_name is still DB_IP.
```
gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
```
The page loads but nothing can be saved, or login fails with a database error: the HTTP health probes pass without touching the database, so a broken database connection does not mark the service unhealthy. The usual cause is a password mismatch after database_password_length was changed. Re-run the db-init job, which resets the user's password from Secret Manager:
```
gcloud run jobs execute "$(gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~db-init" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)" \
  --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --wait
```

schema-load failed: read its execution logs. Note that it reports database not reachable after 60s for any failed connection, including an authentication failure — check the password before the network.

gcloud run jobs executions list --job="$(gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" \
  --region="$REGION" --filter="metadata.name~schema-load" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)" \
  --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

The administrator form was already used: someone reached the URL first. Restrict access first (Task 2), then delete the deployment and deploy it again so the schema is loaded into a fresh database with no administrator.
A configuration change did not reach the running service: if you rebuilt the image without changing application_version, no new revision was created. Change the tag and apply again.
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.

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 (from the same Delete dialog) — it removes the deployment from RAD's records without destroying the cloud resources (it makes RAD forget the deployment). Delete removes everything the module created — the Cloud Run service, the SimpleRisk database and user, the database password secret, the GCS buckets (including uploaded files), and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Cloud SQL instance, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (MySQL 8.0), the `storage` GCS FUSE volume, and runs the `db-init` → `schema-load` init chain
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Service answers; administrator created through the first-run form; schema confirmed in Cloud SQL
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, scale, update the dated version tag, manage secrets/storage/backups, DB access
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, database-auth, schema-load, first-run, stale-image and build issues
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes all module resources

Need RAD to do something it does not do yet? Request it on the roadmap, or vote on what is already there.

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​