Dolibarr on GKE Autopilot

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 GKE Autopilot on top of the App_GKE foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud and Kubernetes 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 that are common to every GKE application — Workload Identity, ingress, autoscaling, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_GKE foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

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What Dolibarr costs on RAD, and how that compares

Dolibarr on RAD's GKE Autopilot module costs about US$110.13 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. For the lowest cost, the Cloud Run guide runs the same Dolibarr for about US$83.61 a month. 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$110.13 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$110.13 a month for the default configuration (table below)	Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 99 credits a day, about 2,970 a month (about US$297 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
GKE Autopilot pod, 1x vCPU / 2 GiB	US$39.68
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
GKE cluster management fee	shared across every GKE app in the project; $0 if this is your only cluster, else ~73
Total	about US$110.13

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, GKE Autopilot, your own project	About US$110.13	RAD's automation, in your project
RAD, GKE Autopilot, a RAD-managed project	About US$297	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 the GKE pod 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$110.13. 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

GKE keeps at least one pod running, so it never scales to zero on its own. 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 3 days or more in your own project (about US$3.67 a day), or about 1 day or more in a RAD-managed one (99 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 web workload. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	GKE Autopilot	PHP/Apache pods on port 80, 1 vCPU / 2 GiB by default
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, shared across pods
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 Load Balancing	External LoadBalancer with a reserved static IP; optional custom domain + managed certificate

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• MySQL 8.0 is mandatory. The database engine is fixed by the shared application layer (the variant passes database_type = null, which keeps the Common default MYSQL_8_0); other engines are not supported.
• Cloud SQL is reached via the Auth Proxy sidecar on loopback. The variant sets DB_HOST = 127.0.0.1; a cloud-sql-proxy sidecar (enable_cloudsql_volume = true) listens on 127.0.0.1:3306, and the wrapper entrypoint aliases the injected DB_* onto DOLI_DB_*.
• Single replica by default. min_instance_count = 1, max_instance_count = 1. Dolibarr keeps session and lock state; the NFS-backed workload deploys with the Recreate strategy, so do not scale beyond 1 without verifying shared-storage behaviour.
• NFS is enabled by default (enable_nfs = true, mounted at /var/lib/dolibarr) so uploaded documents and generated PDFs persist and can be shared across pods.
• Session affinity is ClientIP so a client's requests reach the same pod.
• 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 creates the first-run super-admin account (username DOLI_ADMIN_LOGIN, default admin).
• DOLI_URL_ROOT is not preset on GKE. Set it via environment_variables to the external LoadBalancer or custom-domain URL after the IP is assigned, so absolute links and login redirects resolve correctly.

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2. Google Cloud Services & How to Explore Them

All commands assume you have run gcloud container clusters get-credentials <cluster> --region <region> --project <project> and that PROJECT, REGION, and NAMESPACE are set. The namespace and other identifiers are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. GKE Autopilot — the Dolibarr workload

Dolibarr pods are scheduled on Autopilot, which bills for the CPU/memory the pods actually request. Because the workload is NFS-backed, the Deployment uses the Recreate strategy (a rolling update would run two pods against the same NFS volume and shared DB and deadlock).

• Console: Kubernetes Engine → Workloads → select the Dolibarr workload for pods, revisions, and events. Kubernetes Engine → Services & Ingress shows the external IP.
• CLI:

  kubectl get pods,svc -n "$NAMESPACE"
  kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> --tail=100
  kubectl describe pod -n "$NAMESPACE" -l app=<service-name>

See App_GKE for how Autopilot, scaling, and the workload type (Deployment vs StatefulSet) are managed.

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. Pods reach it through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar on 127.0.0.1:3306; 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 the Secret Manager secret holding the password are all in the Outputs. See App_GKE for the connection model, automated backups, and password rotation.

C. Cloud Storage & file persistence

A dedicated Cloud Storage bucket (suffix dolibarr-documents) is provisioned automatically and the workload service account is granted access. Separately, Dolibarr's document tree lives on NFS (Cloud Filestore) at /var/lib/dolibarr, shared across pods.

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

  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~dolibarr-documents"
  gcloud filestore instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  kubectl get pvc -n "$NAMESPACE"

See App_GKE for CMEK options and GCS Fuse mounts.

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. On GKE, secrets are projected into pods via the Secret Store CSI driver.

• 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_GKE for the Secret Store CSI integration and rotation.

E. Networking & ingress

By default the workload is exposed through an external Cloud Load Balancing IP (service_type = LoadBalancer, reserve_static_ip = true so the address survives redeploys). A custom domain with a Google-managed certificate can be enabled.

• Console: Network services → Load balancing; VPC network → IP addresses.
• CLI:

  kubectl get svc,ingress -n "$NAMESPACE"
  gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_GKE for custom domains, Cloud CDN, and static IP details.

F. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Pod stdout/stderr flow to Cloud Logging; GKE and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring. Optional uptime checks and alert policies are available.

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

  gcloud logging read 'resource.type="k8s_container" AND resource.labels.namespace_name="'"$NAMESPACE"'"' \
    --project "$PROJECT" --limit 50

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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 (Unix socket under /cloudsql via the Auth Proxy sidecar), idempotently creates the application database, user, and grants, verifies the app user can connect, then shuts down the 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 pod start, creating the schema in the empty database. Version upgrades run the image's 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 on loopback. The platform injects DB_HOST = 127.0.0.1 (the proxy sidecar) and the other DB_* values; Dolibarr reads DOLI_DB_*. The wrapper entrypoint aliases them and prefers the injected values over the image's baked mysql/dolidb defaults.
• NFS-backed rollouts use Recreate. Updates terminate the old pod before starting the new one, avoiding two pods deadlocking on the shared NFS volume and DB locks.
• Set DOLI_URL_ROOT after the IP is known. It is not preset on GKE — patch the deployment or set environment_variables to the external URL once the LoadBalancer IP is assigned:

  kubectl patch deploy <service-name> -n "$NAMESPACE" \
    -p '{"spec":{"template":{"spec":{"containers":[{"name":"dolibarr","env":[
      {"name":"DOLI_URL_ROOT","value":"https://dolibarr.example.com"}]}]}}}}'

• 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.
• Inspect the init job and running config:

  kubectl get jobs -n "$NAMESPACE"
  kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" job/<db-init-job-name>
  kubectl exec -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> -- env | grep DOLI_DB

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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_GKE with its standard behaviour and defaults.

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
cpu_limit	1000m	1 vCPU minimum for Dolibarr + MySQL.
memory_limit	2Gi	Minimum 512Mi; 2Gi recommended for production.
min_instance_count	1	Keep at 1 to keep the workload reachable.
max_instance_count	1	Keep at 1 unless multi-pod sharing is verified.
container_port	80	Dolibarr runs on Apache, port 80.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Auth Proxy sidecar (loopback) — required on GKE.

Group 6 — GKE Backend & Cluster

Variable	Default	Description
service_type	LoadBalancer	External IP for the Dolibarr UI.
workload_type	null → Deployment	Deployment (NFS-backed, Recreate strategy).
session_affinity	ClientIP	Sticky routing so a client reaches the same pod.

Group 13 — Filesystem (NFS)

Variable	Default	Description
enable_nfs	true	NFS is on by default so uploaded documents persist and are shared.
nfs_mount_path	/var/www/documents	Where Dolibarr stores documents/PDFs.

Group 16 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	null → MYSQL_8_0	Keeps the Common MySQL 8.0 default.
application_database_name	dolibarr	Database name. Immutable after first deploy.
application_database_user	dolibarr	Application database user; password auto-generated in Secret Manager.

Group 19 — Custom Domain, Static IP & Networking

Variable	Default	Description
reserve_static_ip	true	Stable external IP across redeploys.
application_domains	[]	Custom hostnames + managed certificate.

All other inputs follow standard App_GKE behaviour.

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5. Outputs

These values are returned on a successful deployment and are the quickest way to locate and explore the running resources.

Output	Description
service_name	Kubernetes Service name.
namespace	Namespace the workload runs in.
service_cluster_ip	In-cluster ClusterIP.
stage_service_cluster_ips	Map of ClusterIPs for stage-specific services.
service_external_ip	External LoadBalancer IP (when a static IP is reserved).
service_url	URL to reach Dolibarr.
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 (127.0.0.1 via the Auth Proxy) / port.
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets.
network_name / network_exists / regions	VPC network, presence, available regions.
container_image / container_registry	Deployed image and Artifact Registry repo.
monitoring_enabled / monitoring_notification_channels	Monitoring status and channels.
initialization_jobs / db_import_job	Names of the setup (db-init) and (optional) import jobs.
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / cicd_configuration	CI/CD status and details (repo, trigger, registry).
github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name	CI/CD GitHub details.
artifact_registry_repository / cloudbuild_trigger_name / cloudbuild_trigger_id	Registry and build trigger.
kubernetes_ready	Whether the cluster/workload is ready.
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.

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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_GKE foundation engine, which validates values and combinations at plan time — a StatefulSet forced alongside a stateless setting, IAP with no authorized identities, quota_memory_* given as bare integers, an out-of-range container_port/backup_retention_days. 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	null (→ MYSQL_8_0)	Critical	Selecting a non-MySQL engine breaks the installer and every query.
application_database_name / application_database_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 pod recreation.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	High	The Auth Proxy sidecar on 127.0.0.1:3306 is required for DB connectivity on GKE.
max_instance_count	1	High	Scaling beyond 1 without verified shared-storage/lock behaviour risks split sessions and NFS/DB lock contention.
session_affinity	ClientIP	High	Without stickiness, requests bounce between pods and disrupt authenticated sessions.
DOLI_URL_ROOT (set after IP known)	External LoadBalancer/domain URL	High	A wrong or missing root URL breaks absolute links and the login redirect.
memory_limit	2Gi	High	Below 512Mi the PHP/Apache pod OOMs under load.
quota_memory_requests / _limits	binary units (4Gi, 8192Mi)	Critical	Bare integers are treated as bytes and block all pod scheduling in the namespace.
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.
reserve_static_ip	true	Medium	Without it, the external IP can change across redeploys, breaking DNS and DOLI_URL_ROOT.
backup_retention_days	7 (raise for prod)	Medium	Too short for compliance retention.

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For the foundation behaviour referenced throughout — IAM and Workload Identity, autoscaling, ingress and certificates, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC-SC, backups, and image mirroring — see App_GKE. Dolibarr-specific application configuration shared with the Cloud Run variant is described in Dolibarr_Common.

Related guides

• Hands-on lab: Dolibarr on GKE Autopilot — deploy it step by step, with the console screens and commands at each stage.
• Dolibarr on Google Cloud Run — the same application on Cloud Run, for when you need the other deployment target.
• Dolibarr Common — Shared Application Configuration — the configuration shared by both deployment targets.