How can you ensure that a rotating password for a Cloud Run application is always current without causing downtime?

Mounting the secret as a volume within the application is the best approach to ensure a rotating password for a Cloud Run application remains current without causing downtime. When you use Secret Manager to store the password and then mount it as a volume, your application can access the latest version of the password directly from the file system at runtime.

This method allows the application to seamlessly read the password whenever it needs it. As long as the application can handle reading from the mounted volume correctly, you can rotate the password in Secret Manager without the need to redeploy the application. This minimizes disruption and helps maintain high availability.

By using this approach, any change in the secret is automatically reflected in the application the next time it reads the password from the volume, allowing it to always have the current credentials without requiring a downtime for redeployment or any manual intervention.

Other methods, like using environment variables or embedding the password in code, might not provide the same level of dynamism and could lead to issues such as needing to redeploy the application to update the password or exposure of sensitive data in code repositories.