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
• Worklist

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-namespace: <RESOURCE_NS>

  For now we support kubernetes-namespace due Kiali works in namespace level. We expect to support kubernetes-label-selector and kubernetes-id

• 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:

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

Setting up the Kiali frontend package

1. Install the Kiali plugin using the following commands:

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

2. Select the components that you want to use, such as:

   • KialiPage: This is a standalone page or dashboard displaying all namespaces in the mesh. You can add KialiPage to packages/app/src/App.tsx file as follows:

     /* highlight-add-next-line */
     import { KialiPage } from '@janus-idp/backstage-plugin-kiali';
     
     const routes = (
       <FlatRoutes>
         {/* ... */}
         {/* highlight-add-next-line */}
         <Route path="/kiali" element={<KialiPage />} />
       </FlatRoutes>
     );

     You can also update navigation in packages/app/src/components/Root/Root.tsx as follows:

     /* highlight-add-next-line */
     import { KialiIcon } from '@janus-idp/backstage-plugin-kiali';
     
     export const Root = ({ children }: PropsWithChildren<{}>) => (
       <SidebarPage>
         <Sidebar>
           <SidebarGroup label="Menu" icon={<MenuIcon />}>
             {/* ... */}
             {/* highlight-add-next-line */}
             <SidebarItem icon={KialiIcon} to="kiali" text="Kiali" />
           </SidebarGroup>
           {/* ... */}
         </Sidebar>
         {children}
       </SidebarPage>
     );

   • EntityKialiContent: This component is a React context provided for Kiali data, which is related to the current entity. The EntityKialiContent component is used to display any data on the React components mentioned in packages/app/src/components/catalog/EntityPage.tsx:

   /* 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.

Red Hat Developer Hub

If you want to know more about Kiali in Red Hat Developer Hub follow these instructions

Development

To develop/contribute in kiali plugin follow these instructions