No Drama, Just Code: An introduction to backstage
Welcome to Backstage in Action, a series of blog posts where we will be pulling back the curtains and dive deep into the world of Backstage.io. Whether you're new to the framework or a seasoned pro, I will (attempt to) guide you through the (sometimes challenging and frustrating) setup, configuration and customization of the Spotify Backstage Framework. In this post I will be covering what is backstage and why you should consider it. See what other posts I have planned at the end. What is Backstage Backstage is an open source framework for building developer portals. Powered by a centralized software catalog, Backstage restores order to your microservices and infrastructure and enables your product teams to ship high-quality code quickly — without compromising autonomy. Backstage unifies all your infrastructure tooling, services, and documentation to create a streamlined development environment from end to end. Backstage is also a CNCF Incubation project like many other projects (Kubernetes, Helm, etcd, jaeger, envoy....) What are the key features Service Catalog: A place to register and organize microservices, APIs, and other software components. Plugins: Extendable functionality that allows teams to integrate with third-party tools like Kubernetes, CI/CD systems, and monitoring platforms. Software Templates: Reusable templates for creating new projects, ensuring consistency and best practices across the team. Scaffolder: A feature for creating and managing application blueprints, streamlining the process of setting up new projects or environments. Documentation Hub: A centralized location for all project and API documentation, accessible and searchable by developers. Benefits For engineering managers, it allows you to maintain standards and best practices across the organization, and can help you manage your whole tech ecosystem, from migrations to test certification. For end users (developers), it makes it fast and simple to build software components in a standardized way, and it provides a central place to manage all projects and documentation. For platform engineers, it enables extensibility and scalability by letting you easily integrate new tools and services (via plugins), as well as extending the functionality of existing ones. For everyone, it’s a single, consistent experience that ties all your infrastructure tooling, resources, standards, owners, contributors, and administrators together in one place. What's next? Getting your dev environment setup (Coming Soon) Configuring your environment (Coming Soon) Setting up Authentication with Azure (Entra ID) (Coming Soon) Integrating GitHub (Coming Soon) Customizing the UI (Coming Soon) Understanding the catalog, writing YAML and templates(Coming Soon) Using templates and customizing the scaffolder(Coming Soon) Links https://backstage.io Read on Medium Linkedin
Welcome to Backstage in Action, a series of blog posts where we will be pulling back the curtains and dive deep into the world of Backstage.io. Whether you're new to the framework or a seasoned pro, I will (attempt to) guide you through the (sometimes challenging and frustrating) setup, configuration and customization of the Spotify Backstage Framework.
In this post I will be covering what is backstage and why you should consider it. See what other posts I have planned at the end.
What is Backstage
Backstage is an open source framework for building developer portals. Powered by a centralized software catalog, Backstage restores order to your microservices and infrastructure and enables your product teams to ship high-quality code quickly — without compromising autonomy.
Backstage unifies all your infrastructure tooling, services, and documentation to create a streamlined development environment from end to end.
Backstage is also a CNCF Incubation project like many other projects (Kubernetes, Helm, etcd, jaeger, envoy....)
What are the key features
- Service Catalog: A place to register and organize microservices, APIs, and other software components. Plugins: Extendable functionality that allows teams to integrate with third-party tools like Kubernetes, CI/CD systems, and monitoring platforms.
- Software Templates: Reusable templates for creating new projects, ensuring consistency and best practices across the team.
- Scaffolder: A feature for creating and managing application blueprints, streamlining the process of setting up new projects or environments.
- Documentation Hub: A centralized location for all project and API documentation, accessible and searchable by developers.
Benefits
For engineering managers, it allows you to maintain standards and best practices across the organization, and can help you manage your whole tech ecosystem, from migrations to test certification.
For end users (developers), it makes it fast and simple to build software components in a standardized way, and it provides a central place to manage all projects and documentation.
For platform engineers, it enables extensibility and scalability by letting you easily integrate new tools and services (via plugins), as well as extending the functionality of existing ones.
For everyone, it’s a single, consistent experience that ties all your infrastructure tooling, resources, standards, owners, contributors, and administrators together in one place.
What's next?
- Getting your dev environment setup (Coming Soon)
- Configuring your environment (Coming Soon)
- Setting up Authentication with Azure (Entra ID) (Coming Soon)
- Integrating GitHub (Coming Soon)
- Customizing the UI (Coming Soon)
- Understanding the catalog, writing YAML and templates(Coming Soon)
- Using templates and customizing the scaffolder(Coming Soon)
