In a recent update to server-side tagging in Google Tag Manager<\/a>, Google switched the default<\/strong> deployment of a server-side tagging backend from Google App Engine<\/a> to Google Cloud Run<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now, when you create a new container and choose the automatically provisioned tagging server<\/strong> option, this service will be created in Google Cloud Run instead of in Google App Engine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n While I\u2019ve written about Cloud Run before<\/a>, this update gives me an opportunity to review what actually happens when you provision a Cloud Run environment, how you can upgrade it, and how you can add enhancements such as multi-region load balancing<\/strong> to it (with ease, I might add!).<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a student of Simmer\u2019s Server-side Tagging In Google Tag Manager<\/a> online course<\/strong>, you\u2019ll be happy to know that the course content has a lot<\/em> of updated content regarding the Cloud Run setup. I recommend enrolling in case you haven\u2019t yet \u2013 the course walks you through the nuts and bolts of server-side tagging in a way that a blog post could never replicate.<\/p>\n For an overview of what\u2019s different between Cloud Run and App Engine, I recommend you read through my original post on the topic<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n \n Subscribe to the Simmer newsletter<\/a> to get the latest news and content from Simo Ahava into your email inbox!\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n When you follow the automatic provisioning steps<\/strong>, the process is very similar to what happened with App Engine.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll first need to choose (or create) a Google Cloud Billing account<\/a>, after which Google Tag Manager will automatically<\/em> run through all the build scripts in the background.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n After a short(ish) wait, you\u2019ll be informed that a server environment has been created for you, and your server-side container has been updated with all the relevant information to immediately start working with server-side Google Tag Manager.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you now follow the link to your cloud project and browse to the Cloud Run page<\/a>, this is what you\u2019ll see:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Two<\/strong> services have been created for you in the us-central1<\/strong> (that\u2019s in the United States) cloud region:<\/p>\n Both of these services are running a minimal setup:<\/p>\n This is fine for the Preview server \u2013 you\u2019ll never need to upgrade it to something more powerful. But if you want to run the tagging server in a production-ready capacity, you\u2019ll want to edit it and deploy a new revision<\/strong> with more instances in use (more about this below).<\/p>\n The memory<\/strong> and CPU<\/strong> should be fine with the default values \u2013\u00a0server-side GTM will never really require more power from the individual instances.<\/p>\n Importantly, the services are set in This is one of the biggest benefits of Cloud Run vs. App Engine: you can add as many tagging servers<\/em> as you like, all in different regions. You can then put all of them behind an external application load balancer<\/strong> to have the traffic automatically distributed to the tagging server closest to the visitor geographically. Yes, more on this below, too!<\/p>\n My recommendation is thus to always run the automatic provisioning setup even if you don\u2019t want to actually run the server in Let\u2019s start with a simple step. How do you upgrade the tagging server to production-ready capacity?<\/p>\n You need to click the tagging server in the list of services:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Next, click Edit and deploy new revision<\/strong> to edit the service.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now, scroll down to the Auto-scaling<\/strong> options. If you want to follow Google\u2019s recommendations, set the minimum instances to 2<\/strong> and maximum to 10<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Having a minimum of 2 is just plain common sense to avoid things like resource exhaustion<\/strong> problems denying you of any active instances, or cold boot times<\/strong> increasing your latency unbearably. A maximum of 10 means that that\u2019s the upper limit<\/strong> of what your setup might<\/strong> scale to if enough<\/strong> traffic comes in. You\u2019ll only pay for the instances that are actually in use.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Once ready, scroll all the way down and click the Deploy<\/strong> button to create a new revision and update the deployment.<\/p>\n The deployment is done so that traffic is diverted to the new revision only after it\u2019s up and running. This means that there should be no downtime<\/strong> at all for your server endpoint.<\/p>\n If you ever see a notice in the Google Tag Manager user interface that there\u2019s a new version of the tagging server and you need to upgrade your deployment<\/a>, all you need to do is go through the steps above and click Deploy<\/strong> to deploy a new revision.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You don\u2019t have to make any changes, the redeployment will fetch the latest server container image version from Google\u2019s repository and update your servers with it. You need to do this for all<\/strong> the tagging servers in your setup (if you\u2019re running everything behind a load balancer).<\/p>\n In case you want to quickly create a new tagging server<\/strong> or preview server<\/strong>, the absolutely easiest way to do so is to take an existing server (such as the one created by the automatic provisioning setup), copy<\/strong> it, and deploy it as a new service.<\/p>\n To do this, select the server you want to copy from the list of Cloud Run services and hit the Copy<\/strong> button in the top bar.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here, make sure you update the following:<\/p>\n You can keep everything else with the default values. If you do<\/em> want to make some changes, here are the ones you are probably most interested in:<\/p>\n Under Environment variables<\/strong>, you can change the value of <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Set this as the value of the If you want to change a tagging server to a preview server or vice versa, you need to update the environment variables again.<\/p>\n A Preview<\/strong> server needs the variable <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A Tagging<\/strong> server needs the variable <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Set this URL as the value of the environment variable, and make sure that <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you didn\u2019t run through the automatic provisioning steps, you\u2019ll need to manually<\/strong> create the preview server and any tagging servers you want to associate with it.<\/p>\n To do this, you need to start with the preview server.<\/p>\n Go to Cloud Run<\/a> and click CREATE SERVICE<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Set the Container image URL<\/strong> to On that note, choose the Cloud Region accordingly, too.<\/p>\n This is just for the Preview server so not that significant. But choose whatever region makes most sense to you.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Set CPU allocation to CPU is always allocated<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Set Auto-scaling to 0 minimum instances<\/strong> and 1 maximum instances<\/strong>. Do not<\/em> stray from these values for the Preview server or it might not work correctly!<\/p>\n Keep Ingress control with All<\/strong>, and tick Allow unauthenticated invocations<\/strong> for Authentication.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Expand Container, Networking, Security, and set the Request timeout to 60 seconds<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Under Environment variables, set these two variables:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Under Health checks, click to Add health check<\/strong>, and set it with these settings:<\/p>\n Click UPDATE<\/strong> to save the health check.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Once done, click DEPLOY<\/strong> to deploy the service.<\/p>\n To create the tagging server, it\u2019s really easy to do once you have the preview server in place.<\/p>\n First, open the preview server<\/strong> and copy the preview server URL to someplace where you have it handy (or just have the preview server open in a different tab).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Next, choose the preview server from the list of services and click Copy<\/strong> in the Cloud Run top bar.<\/p>\n![\"Cloud](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/cloud-run-auto-provision.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
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\n X<\/span><\/p>\n
\n The Simmer Newsletter<\/strong>\n <\/p>\nAutomatic provisioning of the tagging server<\/h2>\n
![\"server](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/server-created.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n![\"server](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/server-finally-created.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n![\"Cloud](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/cloud-run-services.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n\n
server-side-tagging<\/code> \u2013 this is the tagging server<\/strong>, which collects all the traffic to your server-side endpoint.<\/li>\nserver-side-tagging-preview<\/code> \u2013 this is the preview server<\/strong> to which the tagging server forwards the requests that were collected while you were previewing the server container.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
us-central1<\/code>, but unlike App Engine, you can simply copy and create new services<\/strong> in a different region, subsequently deleting these original services once the new ones are up and running (more on this below, too).<\/p>\n\n
us-central1<\/code><\/em>. The automatic setup generates a server template you can then copy when you want to create the server(s) with different settings. However, I\u2019ve also added instructions below on how to manually generate the servers if you don\u2019t want to or can\u2019t run through the automatic provisioning steps.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nUpgrade the tagging server<\/h2>\n
![\"Click](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/click-tagging-service.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n![\"edit](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/edit-redeploy-revision.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n![\"auto-scaling](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/min-max.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n\n
Update the tagging server version<\/h3>\n
![\"Update](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/update-tagging-server.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\nCopy and create a new service<\/h2>\n
![\"Copy](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/copy-tagging-server.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n\n
Update the container configuration string<\/h3>\n
CONTAINER_CONFIG<\/code> to point to a different Server container. To find the container configuration string for any given Server container, you need to click the container ID in the top bar of the Server container.<\/p>\n![\"container](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/container-configuraiton-string.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\nCONTAINER_CONFIG<\/code> environment variable to have the Cloud Run server point to the correct Server container.<\/p>\nTagging server vs. Preview server<\/h3>\n
RUN_AS_PREVIEW_SERVER<\/code> set to the value true<\/code>. It should not<\/em> have the PREVIEW_SERVER_URL<\/code> variable set. This is what a Preview server configuration looks like:<\/p>\n![\"Preview](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/preview-server-env.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\nPREVIEW_SERVER_URL<\/code> set to the Cloud Run URL of the preview server. You can find this URL by opening the Cloud Run service for the preview server, and the URL right at the top of the dashboard:<\/p>\n![\"Preview](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/preview-server-url.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\nRUN_AS_PREVIEW_SERVER<\/code> is not<\/em> set. This is what the environment variables for the tagging server should look like:<\/p>\n![\"Tagging](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/tagging-server-env.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\nManually create the servers<\/h2>\n
Create the preview server<\/h3>\n
gcr.io\/cloud-tagging-10302018\/gtm-cloud-image:stable<\/code> and give the server a name. I recommend the following syntax:<\/p>\nserver-side-tagging-geo<\/code> is the geographic region.<\/p>\n\n
![\"First](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/first-settings-preview.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n![\"Next](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/next-preview-settings.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n![\"Request](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/request-timeout.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n\n
RUN_AS_PREVIEW_SERVER<\/code> set to the value true<\/code><\/li>\nCONTAINER_CONFIG<\/code> set to the value of the container configuration string from your Server container (see above)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/p>\n\n
![\"Health](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/health-check.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\nCreate the tagging server<\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"Copy](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/copy-preview-server.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n![\"Tagging](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/tagging-server-new.jpg#ZgotmplZ\")
<\/p>\n![<\/p>\n](\"https:\/\/www.simoahava.com\/images\/2023\/10\/min2-max10.jpg\"){kind=link}