@aljesusg/backstage-plugin-kiali NPM

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

Install the Kiali plugin using the following commands:

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

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>
);

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

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

catalog-list

Check that you entity has the annotations.

entity

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