Platform Engineering

Platform engineering is the discipline of building and maintaining internal developer platforms (IDPs) that enable self-service capabilities for software engineering teams. The goal is to reduce cognitive load, standardize infrastructure provisioning, and accelerate delivery while maintaining governance and security guardrails.

2. Backstage Setup

Backstage is the leading open-source developer portal framework, originally created at Spotify.

Installation

# Prerequisites: Node.js 18+, yarn 1.x
npx @backstage/create-app@latest

# Follow the prompts -- name your app, e.g., "internal-platform"
cd internal-platform

# Start the development server
yarn dev

Production Docker Build

# Dockerfile for Backstage production image
FROM node:18-bookworm-slim AS build
WORKDIR /app

COPY package.json yarn.lock ./
COPY packages/ packages/
COPY plugins/ plugins/

RUN yarn install --frozen-lockfile
RUN yarn tsc
RUN yarn build:backend

FROM node:18-bookworm-slim
WORKDIR /app

COPY --from=build /app/packages/backend/dist/ ./
COPY --from=build /app/node_modules/ ./node_modules/
COPY app-config.yaml app-config.production.yaml ./

ENV NODE_ENV=production
CMD ["node", "packages/backend", "--config", "app-config.production.yaml"]

Core app-config.yaml

# app-config.yaml
app:
  title: Internal Developer Platform
  baseUrl: http://localhost:3000

organization:
  name: MyOrg

backend:
  baseUrl: http://localhost:7007
  listen:
    port: 7007
  database:
    client: pg
    connection:
      host: ${POSTGRES_HOST}
      port: ${POSTGRES_PORT}
      user: ${POSTGRES_USER}
      password: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}

integrations:
  github:
    - host: github.com
      token: ${GITHUB_TOKEN}

catalog:
  import:
    entityFilename: catalog-info.yaml
    pullRequestBranchName: backstage-integration
  rules:
    - allow: [Component, System, API, Resource, Location, Template]
  locations:
    - type: url
      target: https://github.com/myorg/software-catalog/blob/main/catalog-info.yaml
    - type: url
      target: https://github.com/myorg/backstage-templates/blob/main/all-templates.yaml

3. Crossplane for Self-Service Infrastructure

Crossplane extends Kubernetes to provision and manage cloud infrastructure through declarative YAML.

Install Crossplane

# Add the Crossplane Helm repo
helm repo add crossplane-stable https://charts.crossplane.io/stable
helm repo update

# Install Crossplane into its own namespace
helm install crossplane crossplane-stable/crossplane \
  --namespace crossplane-system \
  --create-namespace \
  --set args='{"--enable-composition-revisions"}'

# Install the AWS provider
kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: pkg.crossplane.io/v1
kind: Provider
metadata:
  name: provider-aws
spec:
  package: xpkg.upbound.io/upbound/provider-family-aws:v1.1.0
EOF

# Configure AWS credentials
kubectl create secret generic aws-creds \
  -n crossplane-system \
  --from-file=creds=./aws-credentials.txt

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: aws.upbound.io/v1beta1
kind: ProviderConfig
metadata:
  name: default
spec:
  credentials:
    source: Secret
    secretRef:
      namespace: crossplane-system
      name: aws-creds
      key: creds
EOF

CompositeResourceDefinition (XRD)

This defines a new platform API that developers consume without knowing the underlying cloud resources.

# xrd-application-database.yaml
apiVersion: apiextensions.crossplane.io/v1
kind: CompositeResourceDefinition
metadata:
  name: xapplicationdatabases.platform.myorg.io
spec:
  group: platform.myorg.io
  names:
    kind: XApplicationDatabase
    plural: xapplicationdatabases
  claimNames:
    kind: ApplicationDatabase
    plural: applicationdatabases
  versions:
    - name: v1alpha1
      served: true
      referenceable: true
      schema:
        openAPIV3Schema:
          type: object
          properties:
            spec:
              type: object
              properties:
                parameters:
                  type: object
                  properties:
                    engine:
                      type: string
                      enum: ["postgres", "mysql"]
                      default: "postgres"
                    engineVersion:
                      type: string
                      default: "15"
                    storageGB:
                      type: integer
                      minimum: 20

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