Node-RED on GKE Autopilot

Node-RED is an open-source flow-based programming tool for wiring together IoT devices, APIs, and online services through a visual browser-based editor. This module deploys Node-RED 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 Node-RED uses and how to explore and operate them from the Google Cloud Console and the command line. For the mechanics 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 NodeRED costs on RAD, and how that compares

NodeRED on RAD's GKE Autopilot module costs about US$37–110 a month, with the module fee charged once in RAD credits. GKE Autopilot suits NodeRED that must stay up, scale across pods or run beside other Kubernetes workloads; for the lowest cost, the Cloud Run module runs the same NodeRED for about US$31 a month. If you only need it occasionally — a demo, a seasonal project, something you're evaluating — a RAD-managed project can be deleted and restored within 30 days for a handful of credits (under US$1) instead of paying for it to sit idle. See Pause it for free, below. Figures are as at 8 October 2026; sources are listed at the end of this section.

What you pay on RAD

RAD deploys NodeRED, which is open source, so there is no licence fee per user. You pay for three things:

	In a Google Cloud project you own	In a project RAD manages for you
Module fee, once per deployment	40 credits (US$4 at the top-up price)	36 credits (10% lower)
Build time	About 3-6 credits per build	The same
Google Cloud running cost	Billed by Google to your own billing account, about US$37 a month for the default configuration (table below) — more if this isn't your only Autopilot cluster	Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 61 credits a day, about 1,830 a month (about US$183 at the top-up price, US$146 at the Scale plan's rate)
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 set of them.

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

Resource (module default)	Per month
GKE Autopilot pod, 0.5x vCPU / 0.5 GiB	US$18.04
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$37 (about US$110 if this isn't your only Autopilot cluster)

How it compares

• No turnkey managed SaaS was verified for NodeRED itself, so the honest comparison is a self-managed server: a Hetzner CPX22 (2 vCPU/4 GB) costs about $24/month, a DigitalOcean 2 vCPU/4 GB Droplet about $24/month, and a GCP Compute Engine e2-standard-2 (2 vCPU/8 GB) about $49/month.
• This is a light workload — a cheaper, smaller VPS class than the reference boxes below would also do the job; the figures are shown for a like-for-like comparison.
• No managed SaaS offering for this exact open-source project could be verified with a current, published price, so no figure is given here. Node-RED is usually run alongside other automation infrastructure rather than bought as a standalone subscription, so the realistic alternative is a small self-managed VPS.
• The VPS price is not the whole cost. On a bare VPS you are also the one patching the OS, rotating backups and keeping the database (if any) healthy. RAD's managed Cloud SQL, Secret Manager and monitoring cover that for you, which is the real argument for RAD over a cheaper box — not the sticker price.

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

If NodeRED 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 NodeRED you only need occasionally — a demo, an evaluation, a seasonal project — 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 the VM, the cluster or the compute resource one by one — the whole project, and everything in it, simply stops.
• Restoring costs a few 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 roughly a handful of credits (under US$1) in total for a typical 2-3-deployment chain.
• So a month of occasional use can cost a few dollars, not US$37. Deploy NodeRED, 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 time NodeRED 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 don't 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've customised NodeRED and want to keep that work, copy a backup out (to Google Drive, or a bucket outside the project) before you delete. 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

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 45 credits (US$4.50) in your own project, or 41 credits in a RAD-managed one. Deleting saves money once NodeRED would otherwise sit unused for about 4 days or more in your own project (about US$1.25 a day), or about 1 days or more in a RAD-managed one (61 credits a day).
• Most of the running cost is usually the database and any shared file/cache VM. They stop only when nothing else in the project uses them, so deleting NodeRED while something else shares the project saves only this app's own compute part.
• Keep your data first. Nightly backups go to a bucket inside the deployment and are deleted with it, so copy the latest backup out before deleting if you want to keep it.

Lab sessions and Managed Environments

• Lab sessions, for training. A trainer runs a session for a class. Each participant gets NodeRED 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 NodeRED 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; Delete and restore projects for the 30-day recovery window and what it says about Cloud Storage objects without soft delete; RAD fees and the daily-credit estimates from radmodules.dev/pricing. Prices change; check each source before relying on a figure.

1. Overview

Node-RED runs as a Node.js container listening on port 1880. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	GKE Autopilot	Node.js pods, 500m CPU / 512 MiB by default, horizontally autoscaled
Persistent flow storage	Filestore (NFS)	Flows, credentials, and installed nodes in /data, shared across all replicas
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A dedicated application data bucket
Context storage	Redis (optional)	Disabled by default; enables cross-restart and cross-instance context sharing
Credential secret	Secret Manager	Auto-generated NODE_RED_CREDENTIAL_SECRET encrypts flow credentials
Ingress	Cloud Load Balancing	External LoadBalancer, optional custom domain + managed certificate

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• No database is required. Node-RED stores all state in its /data directory; database_type defaults to "NONE".
• NFS is enabled by default. The /data directory is mounted from a Filestore share so flows, credentials, and installed nodes survive pod restarts and rescheduling.
• max_instance_count = 1 by default. Node-RED is not designed for active-active horizontal scaling — each instance has its own in-memory context. Increase only when using Redis-backed external context storage.
• Session affinity is ClientIP. The editor UI uses persistent WebSocket connections; without stickiness, browser sessions disconnect on every request that routes to a different pod.
• NODE_RED_CREDENTIAL_SECRET is auto-generated. It encrypts all stored flow credentials and is kept in Secret Manager. Rotating it renders existing credentials unreadable — handle with care.
• Health probes use HTTP GET /, which returns the editor UI once Node-RED is fully started (30-second initial delay is sufficient).

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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 Node-RED workload

Node-RED pods are scheduled on Autopilot, which bills for the CPU and memory the pods actually request. Horizontal Pod Autoscaling sizes the deployment between the minimum and maximum replica counts.

• Console: Kubernetes Engine → Workloads → select the Node-RED workload to see pods, revisions, and events. Kubernetes Engine → Services & Ingress shows the external IP.
• CLI:

  kubectl get pods,svc,hpa -n "$NAMESPACE"
  kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> --tail=100
  kubectl describe hpa -n "$NAMESPACE"          # current vs target utilisation

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

B. Filestore (NFS) — persistent flow storage

Node-RED stores all persistent data — flows (flows.json), encrypted credentials (flows_cred.json), installed palette nodes, and the settings file — in its /data directory. An NFS share from Cloud Filestore is mounted at /data so that data survives pod restarts, rescheduling, and redeployments. All replicas share the same data.

• Console: Filestore → Instances for the NFS share.
• CLI:

  gcloud filestore instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  # Confirm the share is mounted inside the pod:
  kubectl exec -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> -- ls /data
  kubectl exec -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> -- df -h | grep -i nfs

See App_GKE for NFS provisioning, backup, and CMEK options.

C. Cloud Storage

A dedicated GCS bucket is provisioned for Node-RED application data (flow exports, backup archives). The workload service account is granted access automatically.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets.
• CLI:

  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud storage ls gs://<data-bucket>/          # bucket name is in the Outputs

See App_GKE for CMEK options.

D. Secret Manager — flow credential encryption

NODE_RED_CREDENTIAL_SECRET is generated automatically during deployment and stored as a Secret Manager secret. Node-RED uses this key to encrypt all credentials stored in flows. No other application-specific secrets are generated by this module.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

  gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret=<secret-name> --project "$PROJECT"

See App_GKE for the Secret Store CSI integration and rotation.

E. Redis (optional context storage)

When enable_redis = true, Node-RED is configured to store flow context externally in Redis, allowing context data to persist across pod restarts and to be shared between multiple instances. Redis is disabled by default.

• Console: Memorystore → Redis (if using a managed instance).
• CLI:

  redis-cli -h <redis-host> ping
  redis-cli -h <redis-host> info keyspace

When enable_redis = true and redis_host is empty, the NFS server IP is used as the Redis host. If NFS is also disabled, redis_host must be set explicitly.

F. Networking & ingress

The workload is exposed through an external Cloud Load Balancing IP. enable_custom_domain defaults to true, provisioning a Kubernetes Ingress with a Google-managed certificate for the hostnames in application_domains; a static IP is reserved by default so the address survives redeploys.

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

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

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

G. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Pod stdout/stderr flow to Cloud Logging; GKE 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. Node-RED Application Behaviour

• No database, no initialization job. Node-RED stores all state in its /data directory. No Cloud SQL instance is provisioned and no schema initialization job is required. The first start creates the default flow files automatically if /data is empty.
• Flow credential encryption. NODE_RED_CREDENTIAL_SECRET is injected at runtime from Secret Manager. This key encrypts the flows_cred.json file on the NFS share. Changing or rotating the key after flows are deployed renders all stored credentials (API keys, passwords, tokens) unreadable.
• Safe mode. NODE_RED_ENABLE_SAFE_MODE is always set to "false", ensuring flows execute on startup. Override it to "true" via environment_variables to start Node-RED with flows disabled for debugging.
• WebSocket editor sessions. The Node-RED editor communicates over persistent WebSocket connections. Session affinity (ClientIP) is required to keep editor sessions routed to the same pod; without it, deploy operations fail with WebSocket disconnections.
• Health probe. Both the startup and liveness probes send HTTP GET to /, which returns the editor UI once Node-RED is ready. A 30-second initial delay is sufficient for a standard startup.
• Scheduled tasks and CronJobs. Node-RED has no built-in scheduled commands. Use cron_jobs to provision Kubernetes CronJobs for periodic maintenance tasks such as flow exports or cache flushes:

  kubectl get cronjobs -n "$NAMESPACE"
  kubectl get jobs -n "$NAMESPACE" --sort-by=.metadata.creationTimestamp

• Accessing the editor. Browse to the service_url output and log in. For production deployments, enable IAP (enable_iap = true) to gate access with Google identity authentication.

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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 Node-RED are listed; every other input is inherited from App_GKE with its standard behaviour and defaults.

Group 1 — Project & Identity

Variable	Default	Description
project_id	(required)	Target Google Cloud project.
region	us-central1	Region for the workload and regional resources.

Group 2 — Deployment Environment

Variable	Default	Description
tenant_id	demo	Short suffix that makes resource names unique per environment.
support_users	[]	Emails granted project access and monitoring alerts.
resource_labels	{}	Labels applied to all resources for cost/ownership tracking.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	nodered	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
application_display_name	Node-RED	Friendly name shown in the Console and dashboards.
application_description	Node-RED - Flow-based programming for IoT and event automation	Workload description annotation.
application_version	latest	Image tag for nodered/node-red. Pin to a specific version (e.g. 4.0.9) for reproducible deployments.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
container_image_source	prebuilt	Use "prebuilt" for the official Docker Hub image; "custom" to build via Cloud Build.
container_image	nodered/node-red:latest	Full image URI when container_image_source = "prebuilt".
container_resources	{ cpu_limit = "500m", memory_limit = "512Mi" }	CPU and memory limits. Node-RED is lightweight; also accepts optional cpu_request, mem_request, ephemeral_storage_limit, ephemeral_storage_request.
container_port	1880	Node-RED's native HTTP port.
min_instance_count	1	Minimum replicas (must be ≥ 1 for GKE).
max_instance_count	1	Maximum replicas. Keep at 1 unless using Redis-backed external context storage.
enable_image_mirroring	true	Mirror from Docker Hub into Artifact Registry to avoid rate limits.
enable_vertical_pod_autoscaling	false	Let Autopilot tune resource requests automatically.
timeout_seconds	300	Maximum load balancer backend wait time (seconds).

Group 5 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings. Do not set NODE_RED_CREDENTIAL_SECRET here.
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name.
secret_rotation_period	2592000s	Secret Manager rotation notification period.
secret_propagation_delay	30	Seconds to wait after secret creation before proceeding.

Group 6 — GKE Backend & Cluster

Variable	Default	Description
service_type	LoadBalancer	How the Service is exposed.
session_affinity	ClientIP	Sticky routing required for the Node-RED editor WebSocket connections.
namespace_name	""	Auto-generated from application_name and tenant_id when empty.
workload_type	null	Auto-resolves to StatefulSet when stateful_pvc_enabled = true; otherwise Deployment.
network_tags	["nfsserver"]	Required for NFS firewall connectivity — do not remove when enable_nfs = true.

Group 7 — StatefulSet Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
stateful_pvc_enabled	null	Enable per-pod PVC templates. Setting to true auto-selects StatefulSet.
stateful_pvc_size	10Gi	Storage size for each PVC.
stateful_pvc_mount_path	/data	Mount path — set to /data to back Node-RED's data directory with a dedicated PVC.
stateful_pvc_storage_class	standard-rwo	Kubernetes StorageClass.

Group 8 — Resource Quota

Variable	Default	Description
enable_resource_quota	false	Cap namespace CPU/memory/object counts.
quota_memory_requests / quota_memory_limits	""	Must use binary units (4Gi, 8192Mi) — bare integers are read as bytes and block scheduling.

Group 9 — Reliability Policies

Variable	Default	Description
enable_pod_disruption_budget	true	Protect availability during node upgrades.
pdb_min_available	1	Minimum pods available during voluntary disruptions.
enable_topology_spread	false	Spread pods across zones.

Group 10 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe_config	HTTP /, 30s delay	HTTP probe against the Node-RED editor path.
health_check_config	HTTP /, 30s delay	Liveness probe — restarts the container if the editor is unresponsive.
uptime_check_config	{ enabled=false, path="/" }	Optional Cloud Monitoring uptime check. Disabled by default; enable for production monitoring.
alert_policies	[]	Optional metric alert policies.

Group 11 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Node-RED requires no init jobs. Provide custom jobs for flow imports or palette installations.
cron_jobs	[]	Kubernetes CronJobs for periodic maintenance tasks.
additional_services	[]	Supplementary Kubernetes Deployments deployed alongside Node-RED.

Group 12 — CI/CD & GitHub Integration

Standard App_GKE Cloud Build / Cloud Deploy integration — see App_GKE. Key inputs: enable_cicd_trigger, github_repository_url, github_token, enable_cloud_deploy, enable_binary_authorization.

Group 13 — Filesystem (NFS)

Variable	Default	Description
enable_nfs	true	Shared Filestore volume for Node-RED's /data directory. Strongly recommended.
nfs_mount_path	/data	Must match Node-RED's data directory.
nfs_volume_name	nfs-data-volume	Kubernetes volume name for the NFS mount.
nfs_instance_name / nfs_instance_base_name	(auto)	Existing NFS VM name or base name for an inline one.

Group 14 — Cloud Storage & Artifact Registry

Variable	Default	Description
create_cloud_storage	true	Provision the GCS buckets in storage_buckets.
storage_buckets	[{ name_suffix = "data" }]	GCS buckets to provision. NodeRED_Common adds a nodered-storage bucket automatically.
gcs_volumes	[]	GCS Fuse volume mounts.
manage_storage_kms_iam / enable_artifact_registry_cmek	false	CMEK options.
max_images_to_retain / delete_untagged_images / image_retention_days	(set)	Artifact Registry cleanup policy.

Group 15 — Redis Context Storage

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Enable Redis for Node-RED context storage.
redis_host	""	Redis endpoint. Required when enable_redis = true (unless enable_nfs = true).
redis_port	6379	Redis port.
redis_auth	""	Optional Redis auth password (sensitive).

Group 16 — Credential Secret & Database

Variable	Default	Description
database_password_length	32	Length of the auto-generated NODE_RED_CREDENTIAL_SECRET (16–64).
database_type	NONE	Node-RED requires no database. Do not change.
enable_auto_password_rotation	false	Automated credential secret rotation. Rotating the key renders existing flow credentials unreadable.

Group 17 — Backup & Maintenance

Variable	Default	Description
backup_schedule	0 2 * * *	Automated NFS backup cron (UTC). Leave empty to disable.
backup_retention_days	7	Retention; raise to 30–90 for production/compliance.
enable_backup_import / backup_source / backup_file	restore options	Restore from a backup on deploy.

Group 19 — Custom Domain, Static IP & Networking

Variable	Default	Description
enable_custom_domain	true	Provision Ingress for custom hostnames + managed certificate.
application_domains	[]	Hostnames to serve.
reserve_static_ip	true	Stable external IP across redeploys.
network_tags	["nfsserver"]	Required for NFS firewall connectivity.

Group 20 — Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)

Variable	Default	Description
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in in front of Node-RED. Strongly recommended for production — the editor exposes full flow editing.
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access.
iap_oauth_client_id / iap_oauth_client_secret	""	Required when IAP is enabled (sensitive).
iap_support_email	""	Shown on the OAuth consent screen.

Group 21 — Cloud Armor

Variable	Default	Description
enable_cloud_armor	false	Attach a Cloud Armor (WAF) policy to the Ingress backend.
admin_ip_ranges	[]	CIDRs allowed privileged access.
cloud_armor_policy_name	default-waf-policy	Policy name.
enable_cdn	false	Enable Cloud CDN on the Ingress backend.

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging

Variable	Default	Description
enable_vpc_sc	false	Enforce a VPC-SC perimeter (requires organization_id).
vpc_cidr_ranges / vpc_sc_dry_run	(set)	Access level CIDRs / dry-run mode.
enable_audit_logging	false	Detailed Cloud Audit Logs.

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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 (Cloud Deploy).
service_external_ip	External LoadBalancer IP (when a static IP is reserved).
service_url	URL to reach Node-RED.
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	Names of any setup jobs.
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.
kubernetes_ready	Whether the cluster/workload is ready. false on first apply of a new inline cluster — a second apply is required.
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).

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
enable_nfs	true	Critical	Without NFS, all flows, credentials, and installed nodes are lost on every pod restart or rescheduling event.
NODE_RED_CREDENTIAL_SECRET (from database_password_length)	auto-generated	Critical	Encrypts all flow credentials. Rotating or changing the key after flows are deployed makes existing credentials permanently unreadable.
enable_auto_password_rotation	false	Critical	Automatic rotation changes the encryption key; all stored flow credentials become inaccessible. Only enable with a re-encryption procedure in place.
application_name	set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates all GCP and Kubernetes resources and disconnects the NFS share.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup_file fails the restore job.
quota_memory_requests / _limits	binary units	Critical	Bare integers are bytes and block all pod scheduling.
max_instance_count	1	High	Node-RED is not designed for active-active scaling. Multiple instances without shared context cause conflicting state.
session_affinity	ClientIP	High	Without stickiness, the editor WebSocket disconnects and deploy operations fail.
nfs_mount_path	/data	High	Must match Node-RED's native data directory. Changing it without updating the settings file routes writes to ephemeral storage.
execution_environment (Cloud Run only)	gen2	High	NFS mounts require gen2.
database_type	NONE	High	Setting to MYSQL or POSTGRES provisions a Cloud SQL instance and proxy sidecar that Node-RED does not use.
enable_redis without redis_host	set redis_host explicitly	High	With NFS disabled and no Redis host, the Redis connection string is empty and context storage fails.
enable_iap	true for production	High	The Node-RED editor exposes full flow editing and credential management; it should not be left publicly accessible.
min_instance_count	1	Medium	GKE does not support true scale-to-zero without KEDA. The HPA rejects min > max.
enable_pod_disruption_budget	true	Medium	Disabling PDB allows GKE to evict the pod during node maintenance, causing a complete outage and potential data loss if an NFS write was in progress.
backup_retention_days	7 (raise for prod)	Medium	Too short for compliance retention.
pdb_min_available vs min_instance_count	leave headroom	Medium	1/1 can stall node upgrades.

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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. Node-RED-specific application configuration shared with the Cloud Run variant is described in NodeRED_Common.

Related guides

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