n8n Service Deployment on GCP Cloud Run with Persistent Storage

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, please ensure you have the following:

• A Google Cloud account.
• The gcloud CLI installed and authenticated with your Google Cloud account.
• A Google Cloud project set up.
• And an Artifact Registry repository configured within that project (see below).

If you are new to GCP or gcloud CLI, Google provides extensive documentation to get you started.

Note: be sure to have a recent version of gcloud CLI installed, as the deployment is using CSI volumes for Cloud Run (early 2023). You can update your gcloud CLI with the following command: gcloud components update.

Shell scripts are used, consider using Git Bash on Windows if no Unix-like shell is installed on your environment.

Clone this project onto your environmment to customize setup parameters, as explained below.

Configure a remote repository with GCP Artifact Registry

In order to deploy n8n docker image, you will need to use Artifact Registry and a remote repository. Because n8n docker image is stored on n8n docker registry (docker.n8n.io), Cloud Run is unable to use directly an image from such registry. A remote repository needs to be create with GCP Artifact Registry, pointing to n8n docker registry.

First activate Artifact Registry API:

gcloud services enable artifactregistry.googleapis.com --project <YOUR_PROJECT_ID>

Then create the remote reposity (make sure to use the same name, n8n-docker, as it is used in the deployment file for Cloud Run. Or adapt the deployment template, deploy-template.yaml, line describing the image of the container):

gcloud artifacts repositories create n8n-docker \
    --project=<YOUR_PROJECT_ID> \
    --repository-format=docker \
    --location=LOCATION \
    --description="n8n Docker Registry Copy" \
    --mode=remote-repository \
    --remote-repo-config-desc="n8n Docker Registry" \
    --disable-vulnerability-scanning \
    --remote-docker-repo=https://docker.n8n.io

Cloud Run will be able to use the n8n docker image that will be copied from n8n docker registry on the first time. No need to copy the image, this will be done automatically.

Prepare information for deployment

The following parameters will be used to customize the deployment of the N8N service on Cloud Run. Please review and prepare them for the deployment steps below.

Parameter	Description
<YOUR_BUCKET_NAME>	The name of the Google Cloud Storage bucket where the n8n data will be stored. This bucket will be created in the next step.
<REGION>	The region where the Google Cloud Storage bucket and the Cloud Run service will be deployed. Choose a region based on your requirements and the location of your users, e.g., europe-west1 for the EU West region, us-central1 for the US Central region.
<YOUR_PROJECT_ID>	The ID of your Google Cloud project. You can find your project ID in the Google Cloud Console, under the project name or in the project settings page.
<SERVICE_NAME>	The name of the Cloud Run service (e.g., n8n).
<SERVICE_ACCOUNT>	The GCP service account to run the service. Usually, the default Compute Engine service account is used, which can be found on the Google Cloud project IAM page (usually <gcp_project_number>-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com). However, it is a better security practice to have a dedicated service account created for the service.

About N8N URL & hostname

You have the option with Cloud Run to configure a custom domain (documentation). This can be used to have a nicer URL to communicate to your users.

# Set N8N Environment Varaibles
# To be used with Cloud Run Custom Domains
N8N_PROTOCOL="https"
N8N_HOST="n8n.yourdomain.tld"
N8N_URL="${N8N_PROTOCOL}://${N8N_HOST}"

Parameter	Description
N8N_PROTOCOL	Should be 'https'.
N8N_HOST	The hostname with the domain you would like to use (such as n8n.yourdomain.com).
N8N_URL	Computed from the two previous parameter. Change if you know what you are doing.

In case you would like to stay with the standard Cloud Run, comment out this part of the script like this:

# Set N8N Environment Varaibles
# To be used with Cloud Run Custom Domains
#N8N_PROTOCOL="https"
#N8N_HOST="n8n.yourdomain.tld"
#N8N_URL="${N8N_PROTOCOL}://${N8N_HOST}"

The script will then go for a standard Cloud Run URL, displayed after deployment command.

Step 1: Create a Google Cloud Storage Bucket

First, create a dedicated GCS bucket for persistent storage of the n8n data. Replace <YOUR_BUCKET_NAME> with your desired bucket name, <REGION> with the region name (e.g., europe-west1), and <YOUR_PROJECT_ID> with your Google Cloud project ID.

gsutil mb -p <YOUR_PROJECT_ID> -l <REGION> gs://<YOUR_BUCKET_NAME>/

Replace <REGION> with the desired region for your bucket. For example, europe-west1 for the EU West region, us-central1 for the US Central region. This bucket will be used to store the n8n data, ensuring data persistence even if the Cloud Run service is scaled down or restarted.

Step 2: Generate a custom Cloud Run yaml file

The script generate_yaml.sh is provided to generate a custom version of the Cloud Run yaml file with your specific bucket name and project ID.

We advise to copy this script to some my_generate_yaml.sh before editing this copy. This way the original file, generate_yaml.sh, is not modified.

cp generate_yaml.sh my_generate_yaml.sh

Edit the bash script to replace the following variables:

• SERVICE_NAME: name of the Cloud Run service (default: n8n)
• SERVICE_ACCOUNT: GCP service account to run the service (usually the default Compute Engine SA, get its name from the Google Cloud project IAM page, usually <gcp_project_number>-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com)
• SERVICE_REGION: name of the region the service will be deployed to (example: europe-west1)
• BUCKET_NAME: name of the bucket created in Step 1
• PROJECT_ID: name of the GCP project where n8n is going to be deployed

Then use the script you updated with your information to generate the yaml file that we are going to use to deploy on Cloud Run.

./my_generate_yaml.sh

if you renamed the script to my_generate_yaml.sh or if not:

./generate_yaml.sh

This script will generate a deploy.yaml file with all parameters set.

It will also display the exact commands you should execute to deploy on Cloud Run. The arguments from these commands are set so that you just need to copy paste these commands.

Step 3: Deploy the Cloud Run Service

Run gcloud command to deploy the service:

gcloud run services replace deploy.yaml --project <YOUR_PROJECT_ID>

Note: you can copy paste the first command from the output of the step 2 command.

Step 4: Allow unauthenticated traffic on the service

Run gcloud command to allow unauthenticated traffic on the service.

gcloud run services add-iam-policy-binding <SERVICE_NAME> --member="allUsers" --role="roles/run.invoker" --region=<REGION> --project=<YOUR_PROJECT_ID>

Note: you can copy paste the second command from the output of the step 2 command.

Remark: it is not possible to instruct this traffic rule from the YAML file. You need to run this command.

Step 5: Check n8n is running fine

Open the n8n service URL in your browser, its URL is output when step 3 is finishing. No need to add the port number like when running in local, n8n can be reached on then standard port (https).

Remark: the initial run is pretty long, n8n is setting up a lot of things.

Refer to n8n documentation to test the n8n service.