Zitadel on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Zitadel is an open-source, cloud-native identity and access management (IAM) platform providing OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, SAML, and user/organization management. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Zitadel 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 Zitadel's own IAM configuration (organizations, projects, OIDC/SAML applications). 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 sign in with the seeded admin account.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets 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 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 Zitadel (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 for PostgreSQL 15 database with its Secret Manager secrets (ZITADEL_MASTERKEY and the initial admin password, plus the database password), a Cloud Storage bucket, builds the container image, and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job (db-init) that creates the application database and role — Zitadel then creates its own schema on first boot via zitadel start-from-init. First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates), and the first boot itself can take an additional 7–8 minutes for schema setup and migrations before the health probe passes.

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="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~zitadel" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(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. Zitadel exposes an unauthenticated health endpoint:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' "$SERVICE_URL/debug/healthz"   # expect 200

Retrieve the seeded initial admin password from Secret Manager:
```
gcloud secrets versions access latest \
  --secret="secret-<resource_prefix>-zitadel-admin-password" --project="$PROJECT"
```
(Find the exact secret name with gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~zitadel" if you don't already know the resource prefix.)
Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser and sign in to the Console with username zitadel-admin and the password from the previous step. Zitadel seeds this account with PASSWORDCHANGEREQUIRED = false, so you can sign in immediately. Once signed in, create a real administrator, then disable or restrict the seeded zitadel-admin account and configure your organizations, projects, and OIDC/SAML applications.
If you deploy behind a custom domain (application_domains / the load balancer), set ZITADEL_EXTERNALDOMAIN in environment_variables to that host and apply via Update — otherwise the OIDC issuer and Console redirects will point at the default run.app host and logins will fail.

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). Zitadel is kept warm by default (min_instance_count = 1, cpu_always_allocated = true) so token endpoints have no cold-start latency; it is safe to raise max_instance_count since all state lives in PostgreSQL.
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. Zitadel applies its own schema migrations idempotently on start — there is no separate migrate step to run.
Manage secrets and backups:
```
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~zitadel"
gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init job
```
Do not rotate ZITADEL_MASTERKEY after first boot — it encrypts all data at rest, and rotating it makes previously-encrypted data (client secrets, key material) permanently unreadable.

Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

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

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]

Logs — from the CLI or the Logs Explorer. The [cloud-entrypoint] log lines show the resolved DB SSL mode and external domain — useful when diagnosing login failures:
```
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=50
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=50 \
  | grep cloud-entrypoint
```
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; 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 Zitadel 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 targets /debug/healthz and allows roughly 7–8 minutes on first boot for schema setup and migrations.
```
gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
```
Login / token exchange fails after deploy: the OIDC issuer and Console redirects are built from ZITADEL_EXTERNALDOMAIN. If you're behind a custom domain or load balancer and didn't set it to match, every login and token exchange will fail — set it in environment_variables and redeploy.
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. Note this job only creates the database/role — it does not create Zitadel's own schema (that happens in-container on start):
```
gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-db-init" \
  --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
```
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 & Sensible Defaults section for setting-specific gotchas (including the critical rule never to rotate ZITADEL_MASTERKEY after first boot, and the mandatory PostgreSQL requirement).

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, GCS buckets, 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, storage bucket, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Health check passes; sign in to the Console with the seeded `zitadel-admin` account
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups, DB access
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging (including `[cloud-entrypoint]` lines); review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, external-domain, database, init-job, 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​