Open WebUI on GKE Autopilot

Open WebUI is a self-hosted AI interface providing a polished ChatGPT-style frontend for Ollama, OpenAI-compatible APIs, and dozens of other LLM providers. This module deploys Open WebUI 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 Open WebUI 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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1. Overview

Open WebUI runs as a Python web workload backed by PostgreSQL. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	GKE Autopilot	Python web pods, 2 vCPU / 4 GiB by default, horizontally autoscaled
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — sessions, conversations, and RAG data all live here
Shared files	Filestore (NFS)	Optional — needed only when multiple replicas share uploaded files
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A dedicated data bucket provisioned automatically
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated WEBUI_SECRET_KEY and database password
Ingress	Cloud Load Balancing	External LoadBalancer, optional custom domain + managed certificate

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• PostgreSQL 15 is required. Open WebUI does not support MySQL or any other engine; the database type is fixed internally.
• No Redis. Open WebUI persists sessions and all application state in PostgreSQL. The enable_redis variable defaults to false and no Redis environment variables are injected.
• WEBUI_SECRET_KEY is auto-generated and stored in Secret Manager. It signs all user sessions; rotating it invalidates every active session simultaneously. Treat it as immutable after first use.
• New users require admin approval by default. default_user_role = "pending" means self-registered accounts cannot access the UI until an admin promotes them.
• Scale-to-zero is enabled. min_instance_count defaults to 0; set it to 1 for a warm instance in interactive team deployments.
• Health probes target /health. Open WebUI exposes this path natively; both startup and liveness probes use it.
• DATABASE_URL is assembled automatically from the Cloud SQL credentials injected by the platform — do not override it.

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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 Open WebUI workload

Open WebUI 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 Open WebUI 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. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15

Open WebUI stores all application data — user accounts, conversations, RAG indices, and uploaded document embeddings — in a managed Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15 instance. Pods reach it privately through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar over a Unix socket, so no public IP is exposed. On first deploy an initialization Job creates the application database and user.

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

  gcloud sql instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql instances describe <instance-name> --project "$PROJECT"
  # Open an interactive shell to inspect schema/data:
  gcloud sql connect <instance-name> --user=<db-user> --database=<db-name> \
    --project "$PROJECT"

The instance name, database name, user, and the Secret Manager secret holding the password are all surfaced in the Outputs. For the connection model, automated backups, and password rotation, see App_GKE.

C. Cloud Storage

A dedicated Cloud Storage bucket (openwebui-data) is provisioned automatically for Open WebUI's backend data directory. 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 GCS Fuse and CMEK options.

D. Filestore (NFS) — optional shared storage

NFS is disabled by default. Enable it (enable_nfs = true) when running more than one replica and uploaded files must be visible across all pods. Without shared storage, a file uploaded to one pod is not visible to another.

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

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

See App_GKE for NFS provisioning details.

E. Secret Manager

WEBUI_SECRET_KEY (session signing key) and the database password are stored as Secret Manager secrets and injected into pods at runtime; plaintext never appears in configuration or logs.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

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

The database password secret name is in the Outputs. See App_GKE for the Secret Store CSI integration and rotation.

F. Networking & ingress

By default the workload is exposed through an external Cloud Load Balancing IP. A custom domain with a Google-managed certificate can be enabled, and a static IP can be reserved 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 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. Open WebUI Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. An initialization Job (db-init) runs postgres:15-alpine against the Cloud SQL instance through the Auth Proxy. It idempotently creates the application database and user before the application starts.
• Database migrations on start. Open WebUI runs its own Alembic schema migrations on every startup, so upgrading application_version applies any new schema changes automatically. On first boot this can take 30–60 seconds.
• DATABASE_URL assembly. The custom entrypoint (entrypoint.sh) assembles the DATABASE_URL from the platform-injected DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_NAME environment variables. The password is URL-encoded in the process. Do not override DATABASE_URL directly.
• WEBUI_SECRET_KEY is immutable. The key signs all user sessions. Rotating it (for example by redeploying with a new random value) immediately logs out every active user and invalidates all remember-me tokens. Treat it as permanent after the first login.
• AI backend connection. Open WebUI connects to an Ollama instance or an OpenAI-compatible API at startup. If neither ollama_base_url nor openai_api_base_url is configured, the UI starts but has no AI backend — all model inference requests fail. Supply API keys (e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY) via secret_environment_variables, not environment_variables.
• User registration flow. With default_user_role = "pending" (the default) all self-registered accounts must be promoted by an admin before they can use the UI. The first admin account must be created directly through the signup page on first boot.
• Health path. Both startup and liveness probes target /health, which returns HTTP 200 once the application and database connection are ready. The startup probe allows up to 300 seconds (30 failures × 10-second period) for first-boot migration to complete.

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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 Open WebUI 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_deployment_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	openwebui	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
display_name	Open WebUI	Friendly name shown in the Console.
description	(set)	Workload description annotation.
application_version	latest	Open WebUI image version tag. Pin to a specific release in production.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
cpu_limit	2000m	CPU per pod; 2 vCPU recommended for RAG workloads.
memory_limit	4Gi	Memory per pod; 4 GiB recommended (RAG pipelines can use 3–6 GiB under load).
min_instance_count	1	Minimum replicas. Set 1 for interactive team use; 0 enables scale-to-zero.
max_instance_count	3	Maximum replicas (autoscaler ceiling).
container_port	8080	Open WebUI's HTTP port (matches the official image's EXPOSE).
timeout_seconds	300	Request timeout. Increase to 600–3600 for document-heavy RAG or slow LLM backends.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar — must be true when connecting to Cloud SQL.
enable_image_mirroring	true	Mirror the Open WebUI image into Artifact Registry (avoids GHCR rate limits).
enable_vertical_pod_autoscaling	false	Let Autopilot tune resource requests automatically (disables HPA if enabled).

Group 5 — Open WebUI Settings

Variable	Default	Description
ollama_base_url	""	Base URL for the Ollama backend (e.g. http://ollama:11434). Leave empty if not using Ollama directly.
openai_api_base_url	""	Base URL for an OpenAI-compatible API (e.g. https://api.openai.com/v1). Must include /v1 suffix.
default_user_role	pending	Role assigned to new self-registered accounts. pending requires admin approval; user grants immediate access.
enable_signup	true	Allow the signup page. Set false after admin accounts are created in production.
webui_auth	true	Enable the login form. Only set false for single-user or fully air-gapped deployments.
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings. Do not override DATABASE_URL or WEBUI_SECRET_KEY.
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name. Use for OPENAI_API_KEY and similar.

Group 6 — GKE Backend & Cluster

Variable	Default	Description
service_type	LoadBalancer	How the Service is exposed.
session_affinity	ClientIP	Sticky routing — recommended for Open WebUI's session consistency.
workload_type	null	Auto-resolves to StatefulSet when stateful_pvc_enabled = true.
network_tags	['nfsserver']	Node/pod tags; nfsserver is required for NFS connectivity.

Group 7 — StatefulSet

Variable	Default	Description
stateful_pvc_enabled	null	Enable PVC templates in the StatefulSet for local data persistence alongside PostgreSQL.
stateful_pvc_size	10Gi	Storage size for each PVC. Default mount path is /app/backend/data.
stateful_pvc_mount_path	/app/backend/data	Container path where the per-pod PVC is mounted.
stateful_pvc_storage_class	standard-rwo	Kubernetes StorageClass for PVCs.

Group 9 — Reliability Policies

Variable	Default	Description
enable_pod_disruption_budget	true	Protect availability during node upgrades.
pdb_min_available	1	Raise min_instance_count above 1 if you need eviction headroom.

Group 10 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe / liveness_probe	/health path	HTTP probe against Open WebUI's health endpoint. 30 s initial delay with 30 failures allowed for first-boot migrations.
uptime_check_config	disabled	Optional Cloud Monitoring uptime check.
alert_policies	[]	Optional metric alert policies.

Group 11 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty to use the built-in db-init job.
cron_jobs	[]	Open WebUI has no required scheduled commands; add any app-specific recurring tasks here.

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.

Group 13 — Filesystem (NFS)

Variable	Default	Description
enable_nfs	true	Shared Filestore volume — needed when multiple replicas must share uploaded files.
nfs_mount_path	/mnt/nfs	Mount path inside the container.

Group 14 — Cloud Storage & Artifact Registry

Variable	Default	Description
create_cloud_storage	true	Provision the data bucket.
storage_buckets	[]	Additional buckets beyond the automatically provisioned data bucket.
gcs_volumes	[]	GCS Fuse mounts for extra bucket-backed directories.
manage_storage_kms_iam / enable_artifact_registry_cmek	false	CMEK options.

Group 16 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
db_name	openwebui_db	PostgreSQL database name. Immutable after first deploy.
db_user	openwebui_user	Application user. Immutable after first deploy.
database_password_length	32	Generated password length (16–64).
enable_auto_password_rotation	false	Zero-downtime DB password rotation.

Group 17 — Backup & Maintenance

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

Group 18 — Custom SQL Scripts

enable_custom_sql_scripts, custom_sql_scripts_bucket, custom_sql_scripts_path, custom_sql_scripts_use_root — run SQL from a GCS bucket after provisioning. See App_GKE.

Group 19 — Custom Domain, Static IP & Networking

Variable	Default	Description
enable_custom_domain	true	Provision a Gateway for custom hostnames + managed certificate.
application_domains	[]	Hostnames to serve.
reserve_static_ip	true	Stable external IP across redeploys.

Group 20 — Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)

Variable	Default	Description
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in in front of Open WebUI.
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access.
iap_oauth_client_id / iap_oauth_client_secret	""	Required when IAP is enabled (sensitive).

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 GKE 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.
service_external_ip	External LoadBalancer IP (when a static IP is reserved).
service_url	URL to reach Open WebUI.
database_instance_name	Cloud SQL instance name.
database_name	Application database name.
database_user	Application database 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 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.
github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name	CI/CD repo 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).

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Critical	Disabling breaks all database connections when using Cloud SQL. Only disable when connecting to an external PostgreSQL over TCP.
WEBUI_SECRET_KEY (auto-generated)	immutable after first use	Critical	Rotating the key immediately logs out every active user and invalidates all remember-me tokens.
webui_auth	true	Critical	Disabling removes the login form — anyone who can reach the URL has full admin access with no credentials.
db_name / db_user	set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; changing recreates the database/user and destroys all data.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup_uri fails the import job.
database_type (fixed)	POSTGRES_15	Critical	Open WebUI requires PostgreSQL; any other engine breaks migrations and startup.
ollama_base_url / openai_api_base_url	at least one set	High	Without a backend URL, Open WebUI starts but all model inference requests fail immediately.
default_user_role	pending	High	user auto-approves all self-registrations; on a publicly exposed service this allows unrestricted sign-up.
enable_signup	true (set false in prod after onboarding)	High	Combined with default_user_role = "user", any visitor can self-register and access all models.
memory_limit	4Gi	High	RAG pipelines can consume 3–6 GiB under load; insufficient memory causes OOM kills mid-ingestion.
backup_schedule	0 2 * * *	High	Without automated backups, the PostgreSQL database (users, conversations, RAG data) is unprotected.
application_version	pinned release in prod	Medium	latest risks an unintended upgrade with a schema change that crashes startup.
min_instance_count	1 for interactive use	Medium	0 adds 30–60 s cold-start latency when the first request arrives (pod + Cloud SQL proxy startup).
enable_nfs	true when max_instance_count > 1	Medium	Without shared storage, uploaded files are pod-local and invisible to other replicas.
timeout_seconds	300 (raise for RAG/LLM)	Medium	Document ingestion and large model responses are cut off at the load balancer timeout.
stateful_pvc_enabled	null/false (use GCS instead)	Medium	PVC-backed StatefulSets prevent pod migration; use GCS Fuse unless local IOPS are critical.
enable_iap / enable_cloud_armor	enable for production	Medium	Without them, the UI is publicly reachable with only Open WebUI's built-in auth as a gate.

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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. Open WebUI-specific application configuration shared with the Cloud Run variant is described in OpenWebUI_Common.