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Backstage Kubernetes Plugin

Visualize your services no matter how or where those services are deployed.

Getting started is simple

The Kubernetes plugin is made up of @backstage/plugin-kubernetes and @backstage/plugin-kubernetes-backend. To make it work, you will need to install and configure them.

Install the Kubernetes frontend plugin into Backstage.

cd packages/app
yarn add @backstage/plugin-kubernetes

Add Kubernetes frontend plugin to the list of plugins.

// packages/app/src/plugins.ts
export { plugin as Kubernetes } from '@backstage/plugin-kubernetes';

Add plugin API to your Backstage instance.

// packages/app/src/components/catalog/EntityPage.tsx
import { Router as KubernetesRouter } from '@backstage/plugin-kubernetes';

const ServiceEntityPage = ({ entity }: { entity: Entity }) => (
  <EntityPageLayout>
    // ...
    <EntityPageLayout.Content
      path="/kubernetes/\*"
      title="Kubernetes"
      element={<KubernetesRouter entity={entity} />}
    />
  </EntityPageLayout>
);

Install the Kubernetes Backend plugin into Backstage.

cd packages/backend
yarn add @backstage/plugin-kubernetes-backend

Create a new file with the following content.

// packages/backend/src/plugins/kubernetes.ts
import { createRouter } from '@backstage/plugin-kubernetes-backend';
import { PluginEnvironment } from '../types';

export default async function createPlugin({
  logger,
  config,
}: PluginEnvironment) {
  return await createRouter({ logger, config });
}

Register the plugin.

// packages/backend/src/index.ts
import kubernetes from './plugins/kubernetes';

const kubernetesEnv = useHotMemoize(module, () => createEnv('kubernetes'));

apiRouter.use('/kubernetes', await kubernetes(kubernetesEnv));

How it looks

Things to know

The Backstage Kubernetes plugin has two separate components:

  • frontend: it will take care of displaying the information to the user.
  • backend: it will take care of connecting to the Kubernetes clusters and sending the information to the frontend.

After installing the plugins, you have to configure them in two steps:

  1. Allow the backend to collect objects from your Kubernetes cluster(s).
  2. Surfacing your Kubernetes objects in catalog entities

Configuring Kubernetes Clusters

Here is a complete example of a configuration entry:

# app-config.yaml
kubernetes:
  serviceLocatorMethod: 'multiTenant'
  clusterLocatorMethods:
    - 'config'
  clusters:
    - url: http://127.0.0.1:9999
      name: minikube
      authProvider: 'serviceAccount'
      serviceAccountToken:
        $env: K8S_MINIKUBE_TOKEN
    - url: http://127.0.0.2:9999
      name: gke-cluster-1
      authProvider: 'google'

You can find the complete list of fields in the the official Backstage documentation.

Using RBAC Authorization

The current RBAC permissions required are read-only cluster wide, for the following objects:

  • pods
  • services
  • configmaps
  • deployments
  • replicasets
  • horizontalpodautoscalers
  • ingresses

An example of a Role to grant read access to pods:

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
  namespace: default
  name: pod-reader
rules:
  - apiGroups: ['']
    resources: ['pods']
    verbs: ['get', 'watch', 'list']

Surfacing your Kubernetes components as part of an entity

There are two ways to surface your Kubernetes components as part of an entity.
NOTE: The label selector takes precedence over the annotation/service id.

Common backstage.io/kubernetes-id label

  1. Adding the metadata annotation

The following annotation must be added so that Backstage can detect that an entity has Kubernetes components.

# catalog-info.yaml
metadata:
    annotations:
        'backstage.io/kubernetes-id': <ENTITY_NAME>
    ...

  1. Labeling your Kubernetes components

In order for your Kubernetes components to show up in the service catalog as a part of an entity, your Kubernetes components themselves can have the following label:

"metadata": {
  "labels": {
    "backstage.io/kubernetes-id": <ENTITY_NAME>
    ...
  }
}

Label selector query annotation

Via a label selector, the user can identify a set of objects.
You can write your own custom label selector query that Backstage will use to lookup the objects. You can read Labels and Selectors documentation for more info.

# catalog-info.yaml
annotations:
  'backstage.io/kubernetes-label-selector': 'app=my-app,component=front-end'

Example of steps to follow

  1. Get the Kubernetes master base url kubectl cluster-info

  2. Get the service account token

    kubectl get secret $(kubectl get sa <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> -o=json \
| jq -r '.secrets[0].name') -o=json \
| jq -r '.data["token"]' \
| base64 --decode \
| pbcopy

  3. Register existing component in Backstage

    # catalog-info.yaml
apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: Component
metadata:
  name: <ENTITY_NAME>
  annotations:
    'backstage.io/kubernetes-id': <ENTITY_NAME>
spec:
  type: service
  lifecycle: production
  owner: guest

  4. Add or update app-config.local.yaml with the following:

    # app-config.local.yaml
kubernetes:
  serviceLocatorMethod: 'multiTenant'
  clusterLocatorMethods:
    - 'config'
  clusters:
    - url: <KUBERNETES_MASTER_BASE_URL_FROM_STEP_1>
      name: minikube
      serviceAccountToken: <TOKEN_FROM_STEP_2>
      authProvider: 'serviceAccount'

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