Tolgee on GKE Autopilot — 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 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.

The lab focuses on operating the GKE 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.
Connect to the GKE cluster and access the running workload.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets.
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).
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.

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 Tolgee (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. Review the estimated cost (if credits are enabled) and click Deploy, which opens the deployment status page with real-time logs.
The platform deploys the workload into the GKE Autopilot cluster, provisions 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 migration job to wait on — the foundation's create-db-and-user.sh step creates the role/database, and Tolgee creates and migrates its entire schema with Liquibase on first boot. First deploys take roughly 15–30 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates).

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

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 tolgee | 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 service is healthy. Tolgee's Spring Boot Actuator health endpoint responds only once the application has fully started and PostgreSQL (via the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar) is reachable:
```
curl -s "http://${EXTERNAL_IP}/actuator/health"   # expect {"status":"UP",...}
```
Allow several minutes on first boot — Spring Boot plus first-run Liquibase migrations start more slowly than a typical Node app.
Retrieve the generated initial admin password and sign in:
```
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~tolgee AND name~admin-password"
gcloud secrets versions access latest \
  --secret="<admin-password-secret-name>" --project="$PROJECT"
```
Open http://${EXTERNAL_IP} 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.

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

Inspect the workload — deployment and pods:

kubectl get deploy,pods -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). GKE requires min_instance_count >= 1 (no scale-to-zero). Tolgee has no queue/coordination layer, so keep max_instance_count = 1 unless you have validated concurrent-writer safety — multiple pods would run as concurrent writers against the same database and NFS attachment volume. Session affinity (ClientIP) is set by default to keep UI sessions on the same pod.
Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update. Because enable_nfs = true by default, the Deployment uses the Recreate strategy rather than a rolling update — the running pod is terminated before the replacement starts, to avoid two pods racing the same NFS volume — so expect a short gap in availability during an update, not a zero-downtime rollout. Tolgee applies its Liquibase changesets on every startup, so pin application_version to a known-good release in production rather than tracking latest.
Manage secrets and jobs:
```
kubectl get secrets -n "$NS"
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~tolgee"
kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"          # the DB role/database setup job
```
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 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 against /actuator/health (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 Tolgee releases.

Pod not Ready / CrashLoopBackOff: inspect events and logs. The liveness probe targets /actuator/health with a wide first-boot window (Liquibase migrations run on a fresh database on first boot). A connection failure from the Spring Boot container to the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar will keep the pod from becoming Ready.
```
kubectl describe pod -n "$NS" <pod>          # Events section shows scheduling/probe/mount errors
kubectl logs -n "$NS" <pod> --previous       # logs from the crashed container
kubectl logs -n "$NS" <pod> -c cloud-sql-proxy   # sidecar logs, if present
```
Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE and the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar container is running in the pod. Tolgee's JDBC driver cannot use a Unix socket, so it connects to the proxy on 127.0.0.1 over plain TCP — verify enable_cloudsql_volume is still true (the module default here); disabling it removes the sidecar and the 127.0.0.1 endpoint the app expects.
Database role/schema not created: there is no dedicated migration job to re-run — the foundation's create-db-and-user.sh step creates the role and database, then Tolgee's own Liquibase migrations build the schema on boot. Inspect the setup job and its pod logs if the database looks empty:
```
kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"
kubectl logs -n "$NS" job/<job-name>
```
Users unexpectedly logged out / bounced between sessions: confirm session_affinity = ClientIP is still set, and check whether TOLGEE_AUTHENTICATION_JWT_SECRET was rotated — rotating it after first boot invalidates every active session.
Update rollout appears to hang: remember the Deployment uses Recreate (NFS-backed default) — expect the old pod to fully terminate before the new one starts; this is a brief outage window, not a stuck rollout, unless the new pod also fails its startup probe.
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 section for setting-specific gotchas (including the memory floor for Liquibase migrations and why enable_cloudsql_volume must stay true on GKE).

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, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, and the Cloud Storage bucket. 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 deploys the GKE workload, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15), secrets, and a storage bucket; Tolgee self-migrates via Liquibase
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Connect to the cluster; health check passes; sign in with the generated initial admin credential and change the password
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect workload, scale, update version (Recreate strategy), manage secrets, DB access
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose pod, database connectivity, setup-job, scheduling, and image-pull 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​