#+TITLE: Backstage kubernetes internal developer platform
#+AUTHOR: James Blair
#+DATE: <2023-02-01 Wed 09:00>


For the second part of our meetup demo session we want to briefly explore the [[https://backstage.io][backstage]] internal developer platform.

An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) is the sum of all the tech and tools that a platform engineering team binds together to pave golden paths for developers. IDPs lower cognitive load across the engineering organization and enable developer self-service, without abstracting away context from developers or making the underlying tech inaccessible.


* Install kubernetes

We want to deploy backstage as a container onto our cluster so the first thing we need to do is ensure we have a cluster available. We can set one up on our machine with a one liner.

#+NAME: Install kubernetes cluster
#+begin_src tmate :socket /tmp/james.tmate.tmate
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_EXEC="--write-kubeconfig-mode 0644" sh -s - && cp /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml ~/.kube/config && chown $USER:$USER ~/.kube/config
#+end_src


Before we proceed let's test our cluster is running successfully by checking the node state with ~kubectl~.

#+NAME: Verify cluster state
#+begin_src tmate :socket /tmp/james.tmate.tmate
kubectl get nodes
#+end_src


We should see a single node in the ~Ready~ state after running the following:

#+begin_src bash
NAME           STATUS   ROLES                  AGE     VERSION
james-laptop   Ready    control-plane,master   3m46s   v1.25.6+k3s1
#+end_src


* Install backstage

Once our cluster is running we can deploy backstage with ~helm~.

#+NAME: Deploy backstage
#+begin_src tmate :socket /tmp/james.tmate.tmate
# Clone chart source
git clone https://github.com/backstage/charts.git

# Ensure namespace exists
kubectl create namespace backstage

# Obtain any dependant charts
cd charts/charts/backstage && helm dependency update

# Deploy backstage via helm chart
helm upgrade --install --namespace backstage backstage .
#+end_src


After a short wait for deployment we can check the health with ~kubectl~ and should see the pod running successfully

#+NAME: Check pod health
#+begin_src tmate :socket /tmp/james.tmate.tmate
kubectl get pods --namespace backstage
#+end_src


If our pod is running successfully we can then use ~kubectl port forward~ to access the deployed pod temporarily in our browser.

#+NAME: Access deployment
#+begin_src tmate :socket /tmp/james.tmate.tmate
kubectl port-forward service/backstage --namespace backstage 7007
#+end_src