Backstage Installation Guide on a Kind Cluster

README.md

Backstage Installation Guide on a Kind Cluster

This guide will walk you through the installation of Backstage, an open source Internal Developer Platform, on a local Kubernetes cluster managed by Kind. We will use the official Helm chart to simplify the deployment and customize the installation using environment variables.

Prerequisites

• Kind: Make sure Kind is installed and configured on your system.
• Helm: Install Helm to manage charts.
• kubectl: The Kubernetes client to interact with your cluster.

Installation Steps

1. Create a Kind Cluster with Ingress Support

cat <<EOF | kind create cluster --name backstage --config=-
kind: Cluster
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
nodes:
- role: control-plane
  kubeadmConfigPatches:
  - |
    kind: InitConfiguration
    nodeRegistration:
      kubeletExtraArgs:
        node-labels: "ingress-ready=true"
  extraPortMappings:
  - containerPort: 80
    hostPort: 80
    protocol: TCP
  - containerPort: 443
    hostPort: 443
    protocol: TCP
EOF

2. Install nginx-ingress

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/main/deploy/static/provider/kind/deploy.yaml

3. Add the Backstage Helm Repository

helm repo add backstage https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/backstage
helm repo update

4. Create the Configuration File values.yaml

Create a values.yaml file to customize the installation. Here's an example with some key environment variables:

ingress:
  enabled: true
  host: "backstage.local"

backstage:
  extraEnvVars:
    - name: NODE_ENV
      value: "development"
      # NODE_ENV variable is set to development in this example. It is required for the Guest Provider plugin to work.
    - name: APP_CONFIG_app_baseUrl
      value: "http://backstage.local"
    - name: APP_CONFIG_backend_baseUrl
      value: "http://backstage.local"
    - name: APP_CONFIG_backend_cors_origin
      value: "http://backstage.local"

Variable	Description
NODE_ENV	Specifies the execution environment.
APP_CONFIG_app_baseUrl	Overrive app.baseUrl param, the base URL of your Backstage instance.
APP_CONFIG_backend_baseUrl	Overrive backend.baseUrl param, the base URL of your Backstage instance.
APP_CONFIG_backend_cors_origin	Overrive backend.cors.origin param, specifies the origin URL for CORS.

5. Install Backstage

kubectl create namespace backstage
helm upgrade --install backstage -n backstage backstage/backstage -f values.yaml

6. Accessing Backstage

Add the following entry to your /etc/hosts file to map the hostname to your local IP address:

echo "127.0.0.1  backstage.local" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

Once the installation is complete, you can access your Backstage instance by visiting the URL specified in values.yaml, typically htts://backstage.local.

Note: This guide provides a solid foundation for installing Backstage. For more advanced configuration and specific customizations, refer to the official Backstage documentation.

Additional Resources:

• Official Backstage Documentation: https://backstage.io
• Backstage Helm Chart: https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/backstage/backstage
• https://github.com/backstage/backstage/blob/master/plugins/auth-backend-module-guest-provider
• https://backstage.io/docs/conf/writing/#environment-variable-overrides