Backstage with Nomad

What is Backstage. Backstage is a powerful service catalog & extensible tools for driving production readiness developed by Spotify.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Nomad - here for install guide

Start Nomad

Update the client.hcl to update the host_volume path that will be used for the postgres database.

  host_volume "database" {
    path      = "/add your path here/backstage-nomad/data" <--- add your relative path here
    read_only = false
  }

sudo nomad agent -dev -bind 0.0.0.0 -network-interface=en0 -log-level INFO -config client.hcl

Nomad URL: http://localhost:4646/

Start Consul

In a separate console window run:

nomad job run consul.hcl

Consul URL: http://localhost:8500/

Start Postgres and Pgweb

nomad job run postgres.hcl
nomad job run pgweb.hcl ## Optional

PGWeb URL: http://pgweb.service.consul:8081/

Start Backstage

For Backstage to read pull the catalog information you will need to create a Github Personal Access Token.

Then you need to modify the backstage.hcl with your token (DO NOT commit your token to Github) and your repo URL like below:

locals {
  image = "brucedominguez/backstage-nomad-example:1.0.0" ## Or the image you have built from source
  github_token = "<ADD PERSONAL ACCESS TOKEN HERE>"
  cataglog_info_url = "https://github.com/<YOUR ORG>/backstage-nomad-local/blob/main/catalog/all.yaml"
}

nomad job run backstage.hcl

Backstage URL: http://backstage.service.consul:7007

Build Backstage from source

1. Clone the backstage repo https://github.com/backstage/backstage
2. Follow the Getting Started Guide. Ensure that you have all the Prerequisites, especially the correct version of Node (I used v14.20.0).
3. In the root of the folder, create your version of the app by running npx @backstage/create-app and follow the prompts
4. Modify the app-config.yaml under the newly created folder (new app name) with the below?:

app:
  title: Backstage App
+  baseUrl: http://backstage.service.consul:3000  # Replace localhost and add the consul dns name of the service

organization:
  name: <ADD YOUR ORG NAME HERE>

...
backend:
+  baseUrl: http://backstage.service.consul:7007 # Replace localhost and add the consul dns name of the service
  csp:
      connect-src: ["'self'", 'http:', 'https:']
+     upgrade-insecure-requests: false # This will prevent urls being upgraded to https since it is local
  database: # Update the database connection to use postgres
+    client: pg
+    connection:
+      host: ${POSTGRES_HOST}
+      port: ${POSTGRES_PORT}
+      user: ${POSTGRES_USER}
+      password: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}

+ catalog: ## Remove the catalog section and add the below to pull the catalog from your Github repo
+   rules:
+     - allow: [Component, System, API, Resource, Location, Domain]
+   locations:
+     - type: github-discovery
+       target: ${GITHUB_CATALOG_URL}
  

5. Optional Remove the reference to the app-config.production.yaml in the Dockerfile prior to building by removing "--config", "app-config.production.yaml" from ./<your app directory>/packages/backend/Dockerfile
6. From the root of you new app folder run the below:

yarn install
yarn tsc
yarn build

8. Enable Github Discovery by following the steps outlined.
9. Next build your Dockerfile from the root of your new app directory

docker image build . -f packages/backend/Dockerfile --tag <your dockerhub repo>/backstage-nomad-example:<add-tag-version>

8. Push the image to your dockerhub repo

docker push  <your dockerhub repo>/backstage-nomad-example:<add-tag-version>