Kiali plugin for Backstage

The Kiali Plugin This plugin exposes information about your entity-specific ServiceMesh objects.

Capabilities

The Kiali plugin has the following capabilities:

• Overview
  • Metrics by namespace
  • Health by namespace
  • Canary info
  • Istio Config warnings

For administrators

Setting up the Kiali plugin

Prerequisites

• The following annotation is added to the entity's catalog-info.yaml file to identify whether an entity contains the Kubernetes resources:

  annotations:
    ...
  
    backstage.io/kubernetes-id: <BACKSTAGE_ENTITY_NAME>

  You can also add the backstage.io/kubernetes-namespace annotation to identify the Kubernetes resources using the defined namespace.

  annotations:
    ...
  
    backstage.io/kubernetes-namespace: <RESOURCE_NS>

• The following annotation is added to the catalog-info.yaml file of entity to view the latest PipelineRun in the CI/CD tab of the application:

  annotations:
    ...
  
    janus-idp.io/kiali-enabled : 'true'

• A custom label selector can be added, which Backstage uses to find the Kubernetes resources. The label selector takes precedence over the ID annotations.

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

• The following label is added to the resources so that the Kubernetes plugin gets the Kubernetes resources from the requested entity:

  labels:
    ...
  
    backstage.io/kubernetes-id: <BACKSTAGE_ENTITY_NAME>`

  ---

  NOTE

  When using the label selector, the mentioned labels must be present on the resource.

  ---

Procedure

1. Install the Kiali plugin using the following commands:

   yarn workspace app add @janus-idp/backstage-plugin-kiali

2. Enable the Kiali tab on the entity view page using the packages/app/src/components/catalog/EntityPage.tsx file:

   /* highlight-add-next-line */
   import { EntityKialiContent } from '@janus-idp/backstage-plugin-kiali';
   
   const serviceEntityPage = (
     <EntityLayout>
       {/* ... */}
       {/* highlight-add-start */}
       <EntityLayout.Route path="/kiali" title="kiali">
         <EntityKialiContent />
       </EntityLayout.Route>
       {/* highlight-add-end */}
     </EntityLayout>
   );

3. Configure you app-config.yaml with kiali configuration

catalog:
  providers:
    # highlight-add-start
    kiali:
      # Required. Kiali endpoint
      url: ${KIALI_ENDPOINT}
      # Optional. Required by token authentication
      serviceAccountToken: ${KIALI_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN}
      # Optional. defaults false
      skipTLSVerify: true
      # Optional
      caData: ${KIALI_CONFIG_CA_DATA}
      # Optional. Local path to CA file
      caFile: ''
      # Optional. Time in seconds that session is enabled, defaults to 1 minute.
      sessionTime: 60
      # highlight-add-end

Authentication methods:

• anonymous Read docs about this authentication in kiali.io
• token Read docs about this authentication in kiali.io

The following table describes the parameters that you can configure to enable the plugin under catalog.providers.keycloakOrg.<ENVIRONMENT_NAME> object in the app-config.yaml file:

| Name | Description | Default Value | Required | | --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------- | --------------------------------------- | --- | | url | Location of the kIALI server, such as https://localhost:4000 | "" | Yes | | | serviceAccountToken | Service Account Token which is used for querying data from Kiali | "" | Yes if using token based authentication | | skipTLSVerify | Skip TLS certificate verification presented by the API server | false | No | | caData | Base64-encoded certificate authority bundle in PEM format | "" | No | | caFile | Filesystem path (on the host where the Backstage process is running) to a certificate authority bundle in PEM format | "" | No | | sessionTime | Time in seconds that session is enabled | 60 | No |

For users

1. Open your Backstage application and select a component from the Catalog page.

2. Check that you entity has the annotations.

3. Go to the Kiali tab.

   The Kiali tab displays the Overview view associated to a Servicemesh.

   

   There is also a Go To Kiali Graph option at the bottom of each card, which redirects you to the Graph in the Kiali Standalone.

Development

To develop/contribute in kiali plugin follow these instructions