Google Cloud

When to use

You want Grovs on one Compute Engine VM in your Google Cloud project. The script creates a dedicated VPC and subnet, a static public IPv4, HTTP/HTTPS firewall rules, an IAP-only SSH rule and one Ubuntu 24.04 VM. The full Compose stack runs on that VM. The default is e2-standard-4 with a 100 GB persistent boot disk. These are billable resources.

Prerequisites

The VM has no service account and no Google API scopes. It pulls public images without cloud credentials.

1. Prepare DNS and firewall

The script creates the firewall rules. Point the DNS records at the static IP it prints in step 2.

2. Create the server

From Cloud Shell or your workstation:

git clone https://github.com/grovs-io/self-host.git
cd self-host
GROVS_RELEASE_URL="$(curl -fsSL -o /dev/null -w '%{url_effective}' https://github.com/grovs-io/self-host/releases/latest)"
./deploy/gcp/deploy.sh YOUR_PROJECT_ID europe-west1-b example.com [email protected] "${GROVS_RELEASE_URL##*/}"

The lookup selects the latest completed release. Backend and dashboard use that same GHCR tag; see Images and releases.

The script shows the project, zone and machine type and asks for confirmation. It passes --project explicitly and does not change your gcloud default project.

3. Install Grovs

Package installation and migrations continue after the VM is created. Point the DNS records at the printed static IP.

4. Deploy and verify

Connect with the SSH command the script printed, then:

sudo journalctl -u google-startup-scripts.service --no-pager -n 100
sudo systemctl status grovs --no-pager
sudo cat /opt/grovs/.env

Open https://dashboard.<your-domain> and sign in with the bootstrap admin values from .env. Then verify the deployment.

Upgrades

grovs.service starts the existing stack on reboot. Bootstrap preserves an existing checkout and .env; it does not regenerate secrets or change the application version. Follow Upgrades from /opt/grovs as root.

Gotchas

• The script stops at the first failed cloud command and does not delete resources it already created. Inspect them before retrying: an existing name makes create fail instead of replacing your installation. Remove a partial deployment with the commands below, or finish provisioning manually. If VM startup failed, fix the reported issue before rerunning bootstrap.

• To remove the deployment, back up your data and .env first. Adjust the values if you chose a different project, name or location:

  BashCopy

  PROJECT=YOUR_PROJECT_ID
  ZONE=europe-west1-b
  REGION=europe-west1
  NAME=grovs
  gcloud --project="$PROJECT" compute instances delete "$NAME" --zone="$ZONE"
  gcloud --project="$PROJECT" compute addresses delete "$NAME-ip" --region="$REGION"
  gcloud --project="$PROJECT" compute firewall-rules delete "$NAME-web" "$NAME-ssh"
  gcloud --project="$PROJECT" compute networks subnets delete "$NAME-subnet" --region="$REGION"
  gcloud --project="$PROJECT" compute networks delete "$NAME-network"

• The boot disk is retained and keeps incurring storage charges. List it with gcloud --project="$PROJECT" compute disks list, snapshot it if needed, and delete it separately once you no longer need the data. A retained disk is not a database backup.