Tolgee on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Tolgee is an open-source, developer-friendly localization (i18n) and translation management platform built on Spring Boot. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Tolgee 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 Tolgee 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, including its Liquibase-migrated database.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets.
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 Tolgee (Cloud Run), 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.
The platform provisions the Cloud Run service, a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) database with its Secret Manager secrets (the auto-generated initial admin password, the JWT signing secret, and the database password), and a Cloud Storage bucket for optional file storage. There is no separate database initialisation job to wait on beyond role/database creation — Tolgee creates and migrates its entire schema with Liquibase on first boot. First deploys take roughly 15–30 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="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~tolgee" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(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 and Liquibase migrations have completed. Tolgee's Spring Boot Actuator health endpoint responds only once the application has fully started and PostgreSQL is reachable:
```
curl -s "$SERVICE_URL/actuator/health"   # expect {"status":"UP",...}
```
Allow several minutes on first boot — Spring Boot plus first-run Liquibase migrations start more slowly than a typical Node app.
Retrieve the generated initial admin password and sign in:
```
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~tolgee AND name~admin-password"
gcloud secrets versions access latest \
  --secret="<admin-password-secret-name>" --project="$PROJECT"
```
Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser and sign in as the initial owner — admin@techequity.cloud by default (TOLGEE_AUTHENTICATION_INITIAL_USERNAME) — with the password retrieved above. Change the password immediately and configure any additional auth providers (Google/OAuth2/SSO) from the Tolgee UI before going live, especially if ingress_settings is left at all.

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). Leave min_instance_count = 1 and cpu_always_allocated = true unless you have a purely interactive deployment with no bulk machine-translation, import, or deletion jobs — those run asynchronously in-process after the request returns and need allocated CPU to finish.
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. Tolgee applies its Liquibase changesets on every startup, so the schema upgrades automatically — pin application_version to a known-good release in production rather than tracking latest.
Manage secrets:
```
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~tolgee"
```
The JWT signing secret (TOLGEE_AUTHENTICATION_JWT_SECRET) is immutable in practice — only rotate it during a planned maintenance window, since rotating it immediately invalidates every active user session.

Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user=tolgee --database=tolgee --project="$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 also provisions an uptime check against /actuator/health (when the service is publicly reachable); 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 Tolgee releases.

Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors. The startup probe targets /actuator/health with a wide first-boot window (Liquibase migrations run on a fresh database on first boot).
```
gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
```
Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE. Tolgee's JDBC driver cannot use a Cloud SQL Unix socket, so on Cloud Run it connects over the instance's private IP with sslmode=require — verify enable_cloudsql_volume is still false (the module default); flipping it to true points the app at a socket directory the driver cannot use and breaks the connection.
```
gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
  --format='value(spec.template.spec.containers[0].env)'
```
Database role/schema not created: there is no dedicated init job to re-run — the foundation's create-db-and-user.sh step creates the role and database, then Tolgee's own Liquibase migrations build the schema on boot. List the setup job and its executions if the database looks empty:
```
gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --filter="metadata.name~tolgee"
gcloud run jobs executions list --job=<job-name> --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
```
Users unexpectedly logged out: check whether TOLGEE_AUTHENTICATION_JWT_SECRET was rotated — rotating it after first boot invalidates every active session.
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 memory floor for Liquibase migrations and why enable_cloudsql_volume must stay false on Cloud Run).

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 the Cloud Storage bucket. 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 a storage bucket; Tolgee self-migrates via Liquibase
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Health check passes; sign in with the generated initial admin credential and change the password
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets, DB access
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, database connectivity, setup-job, build, and IAM 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​