Uptime Kuma on GKE Autopilot

Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted uptime monitoring tool for websites, APIs, TCP ports, DNS records, and more, with a clean dashboard, public status pages, and 90+ notification channels. This module deploys Uptime Kuma on GKE Autopilot on top of the App_GKE foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud and Kubernetes infrastructure.

Uptime Kuma v1 is unusual among the applications in this repository: it stores all state in an embedded SQLite database under /app/data — there is no external database, no Redis cache, and no application secret to manage.

This guide focuses on the cloud services Uptime Kuma 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

Uptime Kuma runs as a single Node.js web workload pulled directly from the official Docker Hub image. The deployment wires together a deliberately small set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	GKE Autopilot	Prebuilt louislam/uptime-kuma pods on port 3001, 1 vCPU / 512Mi by default
Database	None (embedded SQLite)	database_type = "NONE" — no Cloud SQL instance is provisioned
File persistence	Cloud Filestore (NFS)	The SQLite database and uploads persist under /app/data, shared across pods
Object storage	Cloud Storage	None provisioned by default — storage_buckets = []
Secrets	Secret Manager	None — Uptime Kuma has no application secret; admin credentials live in its own SQLite DB
Ingress	Cloud Load Balancing	External LoadBalancer with a reserved static IP; optional custom domain + managed certificate

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• No external database. database_type = "NONE" is fixed by UptimeKuma_Common; enable_cloudsql_volume = false and no db-init job runs. Uptime Kuma creates its SQLite schema on first boot.
• NFS is mandatory for persistence. enable_nfs = true, mounted at /app/data (the container path is fixed — do not change it). Without the NFS volume, the SQLite database and all monitor history are ephemeral and lost on pod recreation.
• No Redis, no application secrets. UptimeKuma_Common outputs secret_ids = {}; there is nothing to inject from Secret Manager.
• Prebuilt official image, no custom build. container_image_source = "prebuilt" deploys louislam/uptime-kuma:<application_version> (default tag 1, the v1 stable/SQLite line) directly from Docker Hub, mirrored into Artifact Registry by default (enable_image_mirroring = true) to avoid Docker Hub rate limits.
• container_port = 3001 — Uptime Kuma's native port.
• Single replica by default and required. min_instance_count = 1, max_instance_count = 1. SQLite is a single-writer database; do not scale beyond 1 replica sharing the same NFS-mounted database file.
• tenant_deployment_id gets a -gke suffix when the variant calls UptimeKuma_Common, so a CloudRun and GKE variant on the same tenant_deployment_id do not collide on Common-owned naming.
• First-run setup is entirely in-app. There is no default admin account — Uptime Kuma prompts you to create one on first access.

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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 Uptime Kuma workload

Uptime Kuma pods are scheduled on Autopilot, which bills for the CPU/memory the pods actually request. The workload deploys as a Deployment (workload_type defaults to Deployment; a StatefulSet also works with the NFS volume if selected).

• Console: Kubernetes Engine → Workloads → select the Uptime Kuma 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 Filestore (NFS) — the only persistence layer

Because Uptime Kuma has no external database, all durable state — monitors, check history, notification configuration, status pages, and the admin account — lives in a single SQLite file on the NFS volume mounted at /app/data. This makes the NFS mount the single most important resource to protect for this module: losing it loses everything.

• Console: Filestore → Instances.
• CLI:

  gcloud filestore instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  kubectl get pvc -n "$NAMESPACE"
  kubectl exec -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> -- ls -la /app/data

See App_GKE for NFS provisioning, discovery, and the shared vs. inline NFS VM model.

C. Cloud Storage

No GCS bucket is provisioned for Uptime Kuma by default (storage_buckets = [] in UptimeKuma_Common); all persistence is on NFS. Set create_cloud_storage/storage_buckets explicitly if you need a bucket for exported backups or automation.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets.
• CLI:

  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~uptimekuma"

D. Secret Manager

Uptime Kuma requires no application secrets — secret_ids = {}. The database password output surfaced by the Foundation is unused (there is no Cloud SQL instance). Only Foundation-level secrets you explicitly add via secret_environment_variables will appear here.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

  gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~uptimekuma"

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 via enable_custom_domain/application_domains.

• 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. Also confirm the GKE egress path allows the pod to reach whatever external endpoints you configure Uptime Kuma to monitor.

F. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Pod stdout/stderr flow to Cloud Logging. Optional Cloud Monitoring uptime checks and alert policies are available (uptime_check_config.enabled = false by default) — note this is a Google Cloud uptime check on the Uptime Kuma service itself, separate from the monitors you configure inside Uptime Kuma.

• 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. Uptime Kuma Application Behaviour

• No initialization job. initialization_jobs is empty by default — Uptime Kuma creates its SQLite schema itself on first boot against the empty /app/data volume. User-supplied jobs are still honoured if provided.
• First-run setup is manual and in-app. On first access to the service URL, Uptime Kuma serves its setup wizard to create the initial admin account — there are no default or auto-generated credentials to retrieve from Secret Manager.
• Health path. Both the default startup and liveness probes are HTTP GET / on port 3001 (startup: 30 s initial delay, 10 s period, failure threshold 30; liveness: 30 s initial delay, 30 s period, failure threshold 3). The optional Cloud Monitoring uptime check also targets GET /.
• Single-writer SQLite over NFS. Running more than one replica against the same /app/data SQLite file risks database-lock contention or corruption; keep min_instance_count = max_instance_count = 1 unless the NFS server's file-locking behaviour under concurrent SQLite writers has been separately verified.
• Inspect the running config and data volume:

  kubectl exec -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> -- env | grep -i uptime
  kubectl exec -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> -- ls -la /app/data

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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 Uptime Kuma are listed; every other input is inherited from App_GKE with its standard behaviour and defaults.

Group 2 — Application & Database Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	uptimekuma	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
application_version	1	louislam/uptime-kuma image tag; "1" is the v1 stable line (embedded SQLite).

Group 3 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
container_image_source	prebuilt	Deploys the official image directly; "custom" would build via Cloud Build.
container_port	3001	Uptime Kuma's native port.
enable_cloudsql_volume	false	Unused — Uptime Kuma has no external database.
min_instance_count / max_instance_count	1 / 1	Keep both at 1 — single SQLite writer.
container_resources	{ cpu_limit="1000m", memory_limit="512Mi" }	Per-pod CPU/memory limits.

Group 6 — GKE Cluster

Variable	Default	Description
service_type	LoadBalancer	External IP for the Uptime Kuma dashboard.
workload_type	null → Deployment	Deployment; StatefulSet also works with the NFS volume if explicitly selected.
session_affinity	(Foundation default)	No app-specific override; Uptime Kuma has no per-session server state beyond the SQLite DB.

Group 10 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe_config	{ enabled=true, path="/" } (HTTP, port 3001)	Startup probe.
health_check_config	{ enabled=true, path="/" } (HTTP, port 3001)	Liveness probe.
uptime_check_config	{ enabled=false, path="/" }	Cloud Monitoring uptime check on the service itself (not an Uptime Kuma monitor).

Group 13 — NFS

Variable	Default	Description
enable_nfs	true	Required. The sole persistence mechanism for the embedded SQLite database.
nfs_mount_path	/app/data	Fixed by the app's storage layout — do not change.

Group 16 — Database

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	"NONE"	Fixed by UptimeKuma_Common. No Cloud SQL instance is provisioned.

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 Uptime Kuma.
database_instance_name / database_name / database_user / database_password_secret / database_host / database_port	Present for output parity with other modules; not meaningful for Uptime Kuma — no Cloud SQL instance is provisioned (database_type = "NONE").
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets (empty by default).
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	Created init job names (empty by default) and optional import job.
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
enable_nfs	true	Critical	Disabling it removes the only persistence layer — the embedded SQLite database (all monitors, history, and the admin account) is ephemeral and lost on every pod recreation.
nfs_mount_path	/app/data	Critical	Changing it points Uptime Kuma's own hard-coded data path away from the persisted volume; the app writes SQLite to a path that is not actually the mounted NFS share.
max_instance_count	1	High	SQLite is single-writer; running >1 replica against the same NFS-mounted database file risks lock contention or corruption.
database_type	"NONE"	Low	Uptime Kuma ignores this — it never connects to Cloud SQL — but changing it will still provision an unused, billed Cloud SQL instance via the Foundation.
container_port	3001	High	Uptime Kuma listens on 3001; pointing the Service/probes at any other port makes the workload unreachable and probes fail.
quota_memory_requests / _limits	binary units (4Gi, 8192Mi)	Critical	Bare integers are treated as bytes and block all pod scheduling in the namespace.
reserve_static_ip	true	Medium	Without it, the external IP can change across redeploys, breaking DNS, bookmarks, and any external status-page embed.
First-run admin setup	Complete immediately after deploy	Medium	The setup wizard is reachable by anyone who finds the URL before an admin account is created — do not leave a freshly deployed instance with a public IP unconfigured for long.
backup_retention_days	7 (raise for prod)	Medium	Applies to Foundation-managed backups; since Uptime Kuma's real state is the NFS-hosted SQLite file, verify NFS/Filestore backup coverage separately rather than relying solely on this setting.

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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. Uptime Kuma-specific application configuration shared with the Cloud Run variant is described in UptimeKuma_Common.