Dolibarr on Google Cloud Run

Dolibarr is a free, open-source ERP and CRM suite covering customers and prospects, quotes, orders, invoices, products and stock, HR, projects, and accounting through a modular PHP web UI. This module deploys Dolibarr on Cloud Run v2 on top of the App_CloudRun foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud infrastructure.

This guide focuses on the cloud services Dolibarr uses and how to explore and operate them from the Google Cloud Console and the command line. For the mechanics common to every Cloud Run application — service identity, ingress and load balancing, scaling and concurrency, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_CloudRun foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

---

What Dolibarr costs on RAD, and how that compares

Dolibarr on RAD's Cloud Run module costs about US$83.61 a month with no per-user licence. This compares against about €140 a month (10 users) on DoliCloud's own Basic plan, or €180 a month on its Premium plan. A self-managed server is cheaper in cash, but then you run the database, backups, security patches and upgrades yourself. GKE Autopilot suits Dolibarr that must stay up continuously or scale across pods; for the lowest cost, this Cloud Run module already gives you the cheaper option — see the GKE guide if you need the other one. Figures are as at 8 October 2026; sources are listed at the end of this section.

If you only need it occasionally — studying, a demo, a seasonal business — a RAD-managed project can be deleted and restored within 30 days for a handful of credits, so that US$83.61 becomes a few dollars a month instead. See Pause it for free, below.

What you pay on RAD

	In a Google Cloud project you own	In a project RAD manages for you
Module fee, once per deployment	110 credits (US$11 at the top-up price)	99 credits (10% lower)
Build time	A few credits per build	The same
Google Cloud running cost	Billed by Google to your own billing account, about US$83.61 a month for the default configuration (table below)	Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 32 credits a day, about 960 a month (about US$96 at the top-up price)
Who owns what	You own the project and its billing; RAD deploys and updates it	RAD owns the project, with guardrails, quotas and budget alerts; you get console access, and a minimum purchased balance is held in reserve

10 credits cost US$1 on a one-off top-up, and less on a monthly plan. In a project RAD manages, the database, file server and network are shared by every application in the project, so a second application does not add a second database.

Default running cost in your own project (us-central1, Google list prices):

Resource (module default)	Per month
Cloud Run, 1x vCPU / 2 GiB (scaleToZero)	US$13.16
Cloud SQL for MySQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	US$51.02
NFS/cache file server (small VM)	US$13.43
Cloud NAT and networking	US$5
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	US$1
Total	about US$83.61

How it compares

Option	Per month	Who runs it
DoliCloud, Basic plan (10 users)	€140 a month (€14/user)	DoliCloud (Dolibarr's own host)
DoliCloud, Premium plan (10 users)	€180 a month (€30 + €15/user)	DoliCloud
RAD, Cloud Run, your own project	About US$83.61	RAD's automation, in your project
RAD, Cloud Run, a RAD-managed project	About US$96	RAD

• DoliCloud is Dolibarr's own official hosting, so this is the closest thing to an apples-to-apples comparison in this guide — same software, different place it runs. At ten users, RAD costs less than two-thirds of DoliCloud's Basic plan and under half of Premium.
• DoliCloud's price grows with every user added; RAD's cost is the infrastructure, which a growing team reaches only when it needs more capacity.

Pause it for free: delete a RAD-managed project, restore it when you need it

If Dolibarr runs in a project RAD manages for you, you have a second option that goes well beyond scaling to zero: delete the whole project, and restore it within 30 days for close to nothing. This suits Dolibarr you only need occasionally — studying, a demo, a seasonal business — far better than running it continuously.

• How it works. Deleting a RAD-managed project unlinks its billing first, then asks Google to delete the project. Google does not remove the project immediately: it keeps it, recoverable, for 30 days. Because billing is already unlinked, nothing is charged while it waits. Unlike deleting one module, this does not tear down Cloud SQL, the NFS VM or Cloud Run one by one — the whole project, and everything in it, simply stops.
• Restoring costs a handful of credits, not a rebuild. Within 30 days, the project's owner can restore it. RAD asks Google to undelete the project and reattaches its billing account, then asks you to run Update on each deployment to confirm everything came back. Because nothing was individually destroyed, that Update finds the same resources already there — it is a check, not a rebuild, and an Update never charges the module fee again. That costs a handful of credits (under US$1) in total for a typical Dolibarr-sized deployment chain, against the 104 credits (US$10.35) a full redeploy costs.
• So a month of occasional use can cost a few dollars, not US$83.61. Deploy Dolibarr, use it for a while, delete the project. Restore it next time you want it, confirm with Update, and delete it again when you're done. You pay only for the module fee once, the builds, and whatever hours Dolibarr was actually live.
• What this needs. You must own the project (not a bring-your-own one RAD only manages billing for), and you restore it yourself within the 30 days — after that, Google deletes it for good. Restoring is admitted like creating a new project: your purchased credit balance must still clear the tier's floor (100 credits for the sandbox tier most study and demo use fits). Google says most services are fully working again within 36 hours of a restore.
• One real gap: nightly backups do not survive. Backups are written to a bucket inside the project, and that bucket is not protected by Cloud Storage's soft-delete, so it is very likely gone as soon as you delete the project — even though the project itself is recoverable for 30 days. If you have customised the data and want to keep it, copy a backup out (to Google Drive, or a bucket outside the project) before you delete, the same as the redeploy workflow below. For a default installation with nothing irreplaceable in it, this does not matter.

Pay only while you use it, the other way: delete and redeploy

Cloud Run already scales to zero between requests. The option above only applies to a RAD-managed project; in your own project, or once the 30-day window has passed, the way to stop paying is to delete the deployment and deploy it again when you need it.

• What a redeploy costs. The module fee again plus the builds: about 114 credits (US$11.45), and about an hour, because RAD recreates the project and shared services before Dolibarr. Deleting saves money once Dolibarr would otherwise sit unused for about 4 days or more in your own project (about US$2.79 a day), or about 3 days or more in a RAD-managed one (32 credits a day).
• Delete everything Dolibarr uses. Most of the running cost is the database and the NFS/cache VM. They stop only when nothing else in the project uses them, so deleting it while something else shares the project saves only Dolibarr's own compute part.
• Keep your data first. The nightly database backups are written to a bucket inside the deployment, and that bucket is deleted with it. Before deleting, copy the latest backup to Google Drive, or to a bucket you keep.
• Note your settings. RAD does not recreate a deleted deployment for you; you enter the settings again when you deploy.

Lab sessions and Managed Environments

• Lab sessions, for training. A trainer runs a session for a class. Each participant gets Dolibarr in their own Google Cloud project for 15 minutes to 24 hours, within an allowance the trainer sets. Either the trainer funds every place, or each participant pays for their own. Everything is deleted when the session ends and unused credits go back to the trainer.
• Managed Environments, for consultancies. A partner runs Dolibarr for a client from a ring-fenced wallet it funds, and settles with the client directly. If the wallet runs low, billing pauses and the data is kept, so nobody receives an unexpected charge. At the end the partner hands the project over and the deployments become the client's own.

Credits can be bought in more than 20 currencies, including XAF, XOF, NGN, GHS, KES and ZAR, by card, bank transfer or mobile money.

Sources (8 October 2026): Google Cloud list prices from the Cloud Billing Catalog API; RAD's own fees and daily-credit estimates from radmodules.dev/pricing; Delete and restore projects for the pause/restore mechanics and window. DoliCloud pricing for the Basic and Premium plan figures;

1. Overview

Dolibarr runs as a single PHP/Apache container on Cloud Run v2. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	Cloud Run v2	PHP/Apache service on port 80, 1 vCPU / 2 GiB by default, serverless autoscaling; scale-to-zero supported
Database	Cloud SQL for MySQL 8.0	Required — the engine is fixed at MYSQL_8_0
File persistence	Cloud Filestore (NFS)	Uploaded documents/PDFs persist under /var/lib/dolibarr across restarts
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A dolibarr-documents bucket provisioned automatically
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated DOLI_ADMIN_PASSWORD and DOLI_INSTANCE_UNIQUE_ID; database password
Ingress	Cloud Run URL / Cloud Load Balancing	Default run.app URL; optional external HTTPS load balancer + custom domain

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• MySQL 8.0 is mandatory. The database engine is fixed by the shared application layer (database_type = MYSQL_8_0); other engines are not supported.
• Cloud SQL is reached over TCP on the private IP. On Cloud Run this variant defaults enable_cloudsql_volume = false, so Dolibarr and the db-init job connect to the instance's private IP on port 3306 (Cloud SQL MySQL 8 uses caching_sha2_password, handled by the init job).
• Single instance by default. max_instance_count = 1. Dolibarr keeps session and lock state that is not multi-instance-safe without shared storage and sticky routing — do not raise max_instance_count above 1 without verifying that first.
• Scale-to-zero is enabled (min_instance_count = 0). Cold starts add a few seconds plus the PHP/Apache boot on the first request after idle; set min_instance_count = 1 for an always-warm service.
• NFS is enabled by default (enable_nfs = true, mounted at /var/lib/dolibarr) so uploaded documents and generated PDFs survive container recreation.
• First-boot auto-install. DOLI_INSTALL_AUTO = 1 makes the Dolibarr installer create the schema on first start; there is no separate migration job.
• DOLI_ADMIN_PASSWORD and DOLI_INSTANCE_UNIQUE_ID are generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager. The admin password is used to create the first-run super-admin account (username DOLI_ADMIN_LOGIN, default admin).
• DOLI_URL_ROOT is set from the predicted service URL at plan time so absolute links and login redirects resolve to the real Cloud Run address.

---

2. Google Cloud Services & How to Explore Them

All commands assume PROJECT and REGION are set. Service and resource names are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. Cloud Run — the Dolibarr service

Dolibarr runs as a Cloud Run v2 service that autoscales by request load between the minimum and maximum instance counts. Each deployment creates an immutable revision; traffic can be split across revisions for safe rollouts.

• Console: Cloud Run → select the service for revisions, traffic, logs, and metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" \
    --filter="metadata.name~dolibarr"
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run revisions list --service <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

See App_CloudRun for scaling, concurrency, execution environment, and traffic splitting.

B. Cloud SQL for MySQL 8.0

Dolibarr stores all application data (third parties, invoices, products, users, accounting) in a managed Cloud SQL for MySQL 8.0 instance. With the Cloud Run default enable_cloudsql_volume = false, the service connects over TCP to the instance private IP on port 3306; no public IP is exposed. On first deploy the db-init job creates the application database, user, and grants; the Dolibarr installer then creates the schema.

• Console: SQL → select the instance for connections, backups, flags, metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud sql instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql instances describe <instance-name> --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql connect <instance-name> --user=<db-user> --database=<db-name> --project "$PROJECT"

The instance name, database, user, and password secret are in the Outputs. See App_CloudRun for the connection model, backups, and password rotation.

C. Cloud Storage & file persistence

A dedicated Cloud Storage bucket (suffix dolibarr-documents, injected by the Common layer) is provisioned automatically, alongside the standard data-suffix bucket from storage_buckets. Separately, Dolibarr's document tree lives on NFS at /var/lib/dolibarr so uploads and generated PDFs survive container recreation.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets; Filestore → Instances.
• CLI:

  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~dolibarr-documents"
  gcloud filestore instances list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for GCS Fuse, NFS, and CMEK options.

D. Secret Manager

Two Dolibarr secrets are generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager: DOLI_ADMIN_PASSWORD (the first-run super-admin password) and DOLI_INSTANCE_UNIQUE_ID (a per-instance security salt). The database password is managed separately by the foundation.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

  gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~dolibarr"
  gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret=<admin-password-secret-name> --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for injection and rotation details.

E. Networking & ingress

The service is reachable at its run.app URL by default (ingress_settings = "all"). An external HTTPS load balancer with a custom domain, Cloud CDN, and Cloud Armor can be layered on; ingress settings and VPC egress control connectivity.

• Console: Cloud Run (service URL); Network services → Load balancing.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" --format='value(status.url)'
  gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun.

F. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container logs flow to Cloud Logging; Cloud Run and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring, with optional uptime checks and alert policies.

• Console: Logging → Logs Explorer; Monitoring → Dashboards / Alerting.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services logs read <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" --limit 50

---

3. Dolibarr Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. The db-init job runs db-init.sh using mysql:8.0-debian. It connects to Cloud SQL (TCP private IP on Cloud Run), idempotently creates the application database, user, and grants, verifies the app user can connect, then shuts down the Auth Proxy sidecar. The job is safe to re-run (execute_on_apply = true, max_retries = 3).
• First-boot auto-install (no separate migration job). With DOLI_INSTALL_AUTO = 1, the Dolibarr image runs its own installer on first container start, creating the schema in the empty database. On version upgrades the image applies its own upgrade steps at boot.
• Admin account. The installer creates a super-admin whose username is DOLI_ADMIN_LOGIN (default admin) and whose password is the generated DOLI_ADMIN_PASSWORD secret. Retrieve it before first login.
• DB env-var aliasing. The platform injects the standard DB_* variables; Dolibarr reads DOLI_DB_*. The wrapper entrypoint aliases them at runtime and prefers the injected DB_* values over the image's baked mysql/dolidb defaults — otherwise the container waits forever for a non-existent host.
• Health path. Startup probe is TCP on port 80; liveness probe is HTTP GET / (the login page returns 200 with no auth). Allow several minutes on first boot for the installer before the login page is served.
• DOLI_INSTANCE_UNIQUE_ID is a stable salt. Keep it constant across the life of the deployment; it is used for cron URLs and token signing.
• Inspect the init job and running config:

  gcloud run jobs list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" --filter="metadata.name~dolibarr"
  gcloud run jobs executions list --job <job-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" \
    --format='value(spec.template.spec.containers[0].env)'

---

4. Configuration Variables

Variables are grouped exactly as they appear on the deployment platform. Only settings specific to or notable for Dolibarr are listed; every other input is inherited from App_CloudRun with its standard behaviour.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	dolibarr	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
application_version	latest	dolibarr/dolibarr image tag used as the custom-build base; latest is pinned to a known-good tag (23.0.3) at build time.
php_memory_limit	512M	PHP memory limit; raise for heavy modules/large document libraries.
upload_max_filesize / post_max_size	64M	Max upload / POST size; keep post_max_size ≥ upload_max_filesize.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
container_image_source	custom	Dolibarr ships as a thin custom build; keep custom.
cpu_limit	1000m	1 vCPU minimum for Dolibarr + MySQL.
memory_limit	2Gi	Minimum 512Mi; 2Gi recommended for production.
min_instance_count	0	Scale-to-zero; set 1 to avoid cold starts.
max_instance_count	1	Keep at 1 unless multi-instance sharing is verified.
container_port	80	Dolibarr runs on Apache, port 80.
enable_cloudsql_volume	false	false = TCP private-IP connection (Cloud Run default).

Group 11 — Storage & Filesystem

Variable	Default	Description
enable_nfs	true	NFS is on by default so uploaded documents persist.
nfs_mount_path	/var/www/documents	Where Dolibarr stores documents/PDFs.
storage_buckets	[{ name_suffix = "data" }]	Additional bucket beyond the auto-provisioned dolibarr-documents bucket, which the Common layer injects via module_storage_buckets.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	MYSQL_8_0	Fixed engine — Dolibarr requires MySQL.
db_name	dolibarr	Database name. Immutable after first deploy.
db_user	dolibarr	Application database user; password auto-generated in Secret Manager.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	TCP port 80, 30s delay, 20 retries	Only needs the Apache listener to bind.
liveness_probe	HTTP / 300s delay	Login page returns 200 unauthenticated.
uptime_check_config	disabled (path = "/")	Optional Cloud Monitoring uptime check.

Group 21 — Redis Cache

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Optional object cache; disabled by default.
redis_host / redis_port	"" / 6379	Redis endpoint when enabled.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

---

5. Outputs

Returned on a successful deployment — the quickest way to locate and explore the running resources.

Output	Description
service_name	Cloud Run service name.
service_url	Default run.app URL of the service.
service_location	Region the service runs in.
stage_services	Stage-specific service URLs (Cloud Deploy).
load_balancer_ip / load_balancer_url	External HTTPS load balancer IP / URL (when enabled).
database_instance_name	Cloud SQL instance name.
database_name / database_user	Application database name / user.
database_password_secret	Secret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_port	DB endpoint / port.
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets.
network_name / network_exists / regions	VPC network, presence, regions.
container_image / container_registry	Deployed image and Artifact Registry repo.
monitoring_enabled / monitoring_notification_channels / uptime_check_names	Monitoring status, channels, uptime checks.
initialization_jobs	Names of the setup jobs (db-init).
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name / cicd_configuration	CI/CD status and details.
artifact_registry_repository / cloudbuild_trigger_name / cloudbuild_trigger_id	Registry and build trigger.
vpc_sc_enabled / vpc_sc_perimeter_name / vpc_sc_dry_run_mode	VPC-SC status.
audit_logging_enabled / artifact_registry_cmek_enabled	Audit logging and CMEK status.

---

6. Configuration Pitfalls & Sensible Defaults

Risk: Critical (data loss / outage / security) — High (service degraded) — Medium (cost or partial degradation) — Low (minor).

Inherited plan-time validation. This module passes its configuration through the App_CloudRun foundation engine, which validates values and combinations at plan time — an invalid container_port, an out-of-range timeout_seconds/backup_retention_days, IAP with no authorized identities, a gen1 runtime with NFS/GCS mounts. Invalid configuration fails the plan with a clear, named error before any resource is created, so most mistakes below are caught up front rather than at apply or runtime.

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
database_type	MYSQL_8_0	Critical	Selecting a non-MySQL engine breaks the installer and every query.
db_name / db_user	Set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/user and orphans all data.
DOLI_INSTANCE_UNIQUE_ID (auto-generated)	Never change	Critical	Changing the salt after first boot invalidates signed tokens and cron URLs.
enable_nfs	true	High	Disabling it makes uploaded documents/PDFs ephemeral — lost on every container recreation.
max_instance_count	1	High	Raising it without shared storage + sticky routing risks split sessions, lock contention, and inconsistent document state.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	High	Enabling without a valid backup_uri fails the import job.
DOLI_URL_ROOT (auto-set)	Actual service URL	High	A wrong root URL breaks absolute links and the login redirect.
memory_limit	2Gi	High	Below 512Mi the PHP/Apache container OOMs under load; gen2 has a 512Mi floor.
DOLI_ADMIN_PASSWORD (auto-generated)	Retrieve before first login	Medium	Not knowing it locks you out of the first super-admin account until reset via the DB.
ingress_settings	all	Medium	internal blocks public access to the Dolibarr UI.
min_instance_count	1 for production	Medium	Scale-to-zero (0) adds cold-start latency on the first request after idle.
enable_cloud_armor	enable for production	Medium	The UI is publicly reachable without WAF protection.

---

For the foundation behaviour referenced throughout — service identity, scaling and concurrency, ingress and load balancing, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC-SC, backups, and image mirroring — see App_CloudRun. Dolibarr-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in Dolibarr_Common.

Related guides

• Hands-on lab: Dolibarr on Cloud Run — deploy it step by step, with the console screens and commands at each stage.
• Dolibarr on GKE Autopilot — the same application on Kubernetes, for when you need the other deployment target.
• Dolibarr Common — Shared Application Configuration — the configuration shared by both deployment targets.
• Deployed alongside Invoice Ninja on Google Cloud Run, Kimai on Google Cloud Run, Docuseal on Google Cloud Run, Nextcloud on Google Cloud Run in the Small Business Suite solution.