Patterns for Production Cloud Run Services

2026-01-15 · Jazz Lien

After deploying dozens of services to Cloud Run, here are the patterns that have served me well.

Container Optimization

Multi-stage builds

FROM python:3.12-slim as builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install --user -r requirements.txt

FROM python:3.12-slim
COPY --from=builder /root/.local /root/.local
COPY . .
CMD ["uvicorn", "main:app", "--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "8080"]

Cold start reduction

Keep container images small (<500MB)
Use minimum instances for critical paths
Lazy load heavy dependencies

Structured Logging

Cloud Run logs work best with structured JSON:

import json
import logging

class JSONFormatter(logging.Formatter):
    def format(self, record):
        return json.dumps({
            "severity": record.levelname,
            "message": record.getMessage(),
            "time": self.formatTime(record),
        })

Health Checks

Always expose a health endpoint:

@app.get("/health")
async def health():
    return {"status": "healthy"}

Secrets Management

Use Secret Manager, never environment variables for sensitive data:

from google.cloud import secretmanager

def get_secret(name: str) -> str:
    client = secretmanager.SecretManagerServiceClient()
    response = client.access_secret_version(name=name)
    return response.payload.data.decode()