My Cloud Run hangs while downloading Large OpenWeight model Is it normal?

The output is like below 

ravi_retheesh@cloudshell:~ (gemmabigquerymcp)$ gcloud builds submit --project="${GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT}" --region="${GOOGLE_CLOUD_REGION}" --no-source \

substitutions="_MODEL_NAME=${MODEL_NAME},_GCS_MODEL_LOCATION=${GCS_MODEL_LOCATION}" \

    --config=/dev/stdin <<'EOF'

steps:

- name: 'gcr.io/google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli:slim'

  entrypoint: 'bash'

  args:

  - '-c'

  - |

    if [[ "$_GCS_MODEL_LOCATION" == *"vertex-model-garden-public-us"* ]]; then

      echo "Using the public cache bucket."

      exit 0

    fi

    gcloud config set storage/parallel_composite_upload_enabled True

    gcloud config set storage/parallel_composite_upload_threshold 150M

    gcloud config set storage/sliced_object_download_threshold 150M

    MODEL_NAME="$_MODEL_NAME"

    SHORT_NAME="$${MODEL_NAME#*/}"

    gcloud storage cp -r -D "gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/$${SHORT_NAME}" "$_GCS_MODEL_LOCATION"

EOF

Created [https://cloudbuild.googleapis.com/v1/projects/gemmabigquerymcp/locations/us-central1/builds/21faa182-824e-42fb-b292-d4368222d847].

Logs are available at [ https://console.cloud.google.com/cloud-build/builds;region=us-central1/21faa182-824e-42fb-b292-d4368222d847?project=593821728960 ].

Waiting for build to complete. Polling interval: 1 second(s).

----------------------------- REMOTE BUILD OUTPUT ------------------------------

starting build "21faa182-824e-42fb-b292-d4368222d847"

FETCHSOURCE

BUILD

Pulling image: gcr.io/google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli:slim

slim: Pulling from google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli

6310eb16bf42: Pulling fs layer

488f94d8fb5f: Pulling fs layer

4f4fb700ef54: Pulling fs layer

3cbf6ceea8d8: Pulling fs layer

8421ab9bea9a: Pulling fs layer

488f94d8fb5f: Verifying Checksum

488f94d8fb5f: Download complete

8421ab9bea9a: Verifying Checksum

8421ab9bea9a: Download complete

4f4fb700ef54: Verifying Checksum

4f4fb700ef54: Download complete

6310eb16bf42: Verifying Checksum

6310eb16bf42: Download complete

6310eb16bf42: Pull complete

488f94d8fb5f: Pull complete

4f4fb700ef54: Pull complete

3cbf6ceea8d8: Verifying Checksum

3cbf6ceea8d8: Download complete

3cbf6ceea8d8: Pull complete

8421ab9bea9a: Pull complete

Digest: sha256:14026c08cf391812086012d6c5f14078221ce1b46be0df419f7f31ec9f69c712

Status: Downloaded newer image for gcr.io/google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli:slim

gcr.io/google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli:slim

Updated property [storage/parallel_composite_upload_enabled].

Updated property [storage/parallel_composite_upload_threshold].

Updated property [storage/sliced_object_download_threshold].

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/README.md to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/README.md

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/chat_template.jinja to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/chat_template.jinja

  

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/config.json to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/config.json

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/generation_config.json to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/generation_config.json

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/model-00001-of-00002.safetensors to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/model-00001-of-00002.safetensors

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/model-00002-of-00002.safetensors to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/model-00002-of-00002.safetensors

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/model.safetensors.index.json to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/model.safetensors.index.json

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/processor_config.json to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/processor_config.json

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/tokenizer.json to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/tokenizer.json

Copying gs://vertex-model-garden-public-us/gemma4/gemma-4-31B-it/tokenizer_config.json to gs://gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache/model-cache/google/gemma-4-31B-it/tokenizer_config.json 

Yes, hanging at this point is completely expected.

What you are looking at in your terminal output is the script successfully copying the smaller configuration files (README.md, tokenizers, json configs), and it has now reached the heavy .safetensors files.

What is happening internally?

Massive File Sizes: The Gemma 4 31B model consists of multi-gigabyte weight tensors split across multiple large files (e.g., model-00001-of-00002.safetensors and model-00002-of-00002.safetensors), each weighing anywhere from 10 GB to 15 GB+ depending on the quantization.

Silent Progress: The standard gcloud storage cp command does not stream a granular, incremental progress bar inside a Cloud Build remote execution log. Because it is processing a massive file payload over the network in total silence, the terminal appears completely frozen.

Is it actually working?

Yes. As long as the build hasn't timed out or thrown an explicit error, the Cloud Build worker is actively pulling the file blocks from Google's public model garden bucket and streaming them into your custom GCS cache bucket (gemmabigquerymcp-us-central1-hf-model-cache).

What should you do?

Wait it out: Depending on network routing inside the us-central1 data center, a multi-gigabyte copy can take anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes.

Verify via Console (Optional): If you want to check if data is actually transferring, you can open a separate Cloud Shell tab and run a check on your destination bucket to see file sizes growing:

Bash

gcloud storage du -s "gs://${MODEL_CACHE_BUCKET}"

Let it run for a few more minutes; it will finish and proceed to the next step once the tensor files are fully copied over.