Dynatrace Backstage Plugins

Context-rich observability and security insights at hand - The Dynatrace Backstage plugins enable you to fetch observability and security data from Dynatrace to be displayed at software components managed in your Backstage Software Catalog. The data is in tabular format with smart links to Dynatrace Apps for deeper analysis and root cause investigation in case of a related problem or security vulnerability.

The plugins support Kubernetes entities by default. This means that it comes with a pre-configured query for Kubernetes deployments and a dedicated component for data representation.

This repository contains a complete Backstage installation at its root, with the individual plugins in the plugins directory. Backstage is configured to include the plugins so you can start the app and see them in action.

Table of contents:

• Overview
• Getting Started
• Additional Features
• Contributing

Overview

Three plugins are required to fetch and visualize the data from Dynatrace:

• DQL - A plugin showing DQL query results from Dynatrace in Backstage.
• DQL Backend - The backend for the DQL plugin.
• DQL Common - Common functionality shared between the DQL frontend and backend plugin.

With the Backstage plugins, the Backstage Software Catalog component can be associated with real-time monitoring data. The screenshot shows three Kubernetes deployments of the easytrade-frontend component running in different namespaces, i.e., development, hardening, and production. The table provides smart links for more details about the workload and logs in Dynatrace.

While Kubernetes deployments are supported by default, any data can be fetched from Dynatrace and displayed in Backstage. See below how to configure custom queries.

Getting Started

Next are the instructions to install, integrate, configure, and run the Dyantrace Backstage plugins.

Install Plugins

We are publishing our packages to NPM and removed the release candidate (v1.0.0-rc1) packages from the GitHub registry. If you were using the v1.0.0-rc1 packages, please update your .yarnrc.yml correspondingly.

Install the DQL plugins into Backstage:

yarn --cwd packages/app add @dynatrace/backstage-plugin-dql
yarn --cwd packages/backend add @dynatrace/backstage-plugin-dql-backend
yarn --cwd packages/backend add @dynatrace/backstage-plugin-dql-common

Integrate the EntityDqlQueryCard

Add the DQL plugin to the respective component type pages in your packages/app/src/components/catalog/EntityPage.tsx:

<EntityDqlQueryCard
  title="Kubernetes Deployments"
  queryId="dynatrace.kubernetes-deployments"
/>

See the EntityPage.tsx file in this repository (packages/app/src/components/catalog/EntityPage.tsx) for a full example.

Integrate the DQL Backend Plugin

Add the DQL backend plugin to in packages/backend/src/index.ts:

const backend = createBackend();
...
backend.add(import('@dynatrace/backstage-plugin-dql-backend'));
...

See the index.ts file in this repository (packages/backend/src/index.ts) for a full example.

Add Dynatrace Environment Connection

Before configuring a Dynatrace connection, an OAuth 2.0 client is required.

How to create an OAuth 2.0 client

1. In Dynatrace, go to Account Management.
2. Select Identity & access management > OAuth clients.
3. Select Create client.
4. Enter a client description and the user email.
5. Select at least the following scopes.
   • storage:metrics:read
   • storage:entities:read
   • storage:events:read
   • storage:buckets:read
6. Scroll down and select Create client.
7. Copy your client ID, client secret, and Dynatrace account URN. These settings are required for the Backstage plugin configuration.

Create or update the app-config.local.yaml file (excluded by .gitignore) configuring the connection to the Dynatrace environment:

dynatrace:
  environments:
    - name: xxxxxxxx
      url: https://xxxxxxxx.sprint.apps.dynatracelabs.com
      tokenUrl: https://sso-sprint.dynatracelabs.com/sso/oauth2/token
      accountUrn: <accountUrn>
      clientId: <clientId>
      clientSecret: <clientSecret>

See below how to configure multiple Dynatrace environments.

Run Backstage with Dynatrace Plugins

To start the app, run:

yarn install
yarn dev

Backstage is pre-configured but relies on appropriate data to be available in the demo Dynatrace environment. See catalog-info.yaml for details.

Additional Features

Find here additional features to customize the plugin for different requirements.

Multi-environment Support

If the component in Backstage should display data from multiple Dynatrace environments, add each Dynatrace environment to the dynatrace.environments list in the app-config.local.yaml file.

dynatrace:
  environments:
    - name: xxxxxxxx
      url: https://xxxxxxxx.apps.dynatrace.com
      tokenUrl: https://sso.dynatrace.com/sso/oauth2/token
      accountUrn: <accountUrn>
      clientId: <clientId>
      clientSecret: <clientSecret>
    - name: yyyyyyyy
      url: https://yyyyyyyy.apps.dynatrace.com
      tokenUrl: https://sso.dynatrace.com/sso/oauth2/token
      accountUrn: <accountUrn>
      clientId: <clientId>
      clientSecret: <clientSecret>

Kubernetes Use Case

Using the EntityKubernetesDeploymentsCard, you can see the Kubernetes deployments in your Dynatrace environment.

<EntityKubernetesDeploymentsCard
  title="Show me my Kubernetes deployments"
  queryId="dynatrace.kubernetes-deployments"
/>

Convention: Kubernetes pods will be listed for the corresponding Backstage component if they are properly annotated in the deployment descriptor. See annotations.

Example:

backstage.io/kubernetes-id: <backstage-namespace>.<backstage-component-name> *)
backstage.io/kubernetes-namespace: namespace
backstage.io/kubernetes-label-selector: stage=hardening,name=frontend

*) While any value can be defined, it is recommended to set the backstage namespace followed by the component name.

• The annotation backstage.io/kubernetes-id will look for the Kubernetes label backstage.io/kubernetes-id.
• The annotation backstage.io/kubernetes-namespace will look for the Kubernetes namespace.
• The annotation backstage.io/kubernetes-label-selector will look for the labels defined in it. So backstage.io/kubernetes-label-selector: stage=hardening,name=frontend will look for a Kubernetes label stage with the value hardening and a label name with the value frontend.

If a backstage.io/kubernetes-label-selector is given, backstage.io/kubernetes-id is ignored.

If no namespace is given, it looks for all namespaces. There is no fallback to default.

The query for fetching the monitoring data for Kubernetes deployments is defined here: dynatrace.kubernetes-deployments. You can change this query for all cards or override it using a custom query.

Custom Queries

You can also register your custom queries and use them with EntityDqlQueryCard:

dynatrace:
  queries:
    - id: my-custom-query
      query: >
        fetch events | filter event.kind == "DAVIS_EVENT" | fields event.kind,
        timestamp

Queries can contain placeholders, which will be replaced with the values from the context in which it is executed. These placeholders are prefixed with $$ in order to escape the environment variable substitution of Backstage. The following placeholders are available:

• $${componentNamespace} the namespace of the Backstage component, as defined in the Backstage catalog
• $${componentName} the name of the Backstage component, as defined in the Backstage catalog
• $${environmentName} the name of the environment (e.g. production), as defined in the Dynatrace environment configuration
• $${environmentUrl} the URL of the environment (e.g. https://my-environment.dynatrace.com), as defined in the Dynatrace environment configuration

For example, to filter for the events of the component, you could use the following in your query:

filter backstageComponent == "$${componentNamespace}.$${componentName}"

To be able to render correctly, the DQL must return data conforming to the following:

• No null values; use coalesce to replace null values with a default value
• May contain simple types:
  • Strings (e.g. Name: 'My Name')
• May contain complex types that have a type discriminator (type):
  • Links: (e.g. Logs: { type: 'link', title: 'Link to Logs', url: 'https...' })
• As a fallback, other types will be rendered as JSON

An example of a valid DQL result would be:

[
  {
    "Name": "backstage",
    "Namespace": "hardening",
    "Link": {
      "type": "link",
      "text": "Click me",
      "url": "https://backstage.io"
    }
  }
]

To include the result table for your custom query, you would reference the query by its ID with the custom. prefix:

<EntityDqlQueryCard
  title="My Custom Query Results"
  queryId="custom.my-custom-query"
/>

Backlink to Dynatrace

To link from a table cell to a Dynatrace app, the DQL query must contain a record with the proper type, text, and url. This is an example to link to the Dynatrace Kubernetes app filtered by Kubernetes pods:

fetch dt.entity.cloud_application, from: -10m
| fieldsAdd Workload = record({type="link", text=entity.name, url=concat("\${environmentUrl}/ui/apps/dynatrace.kubernetes/resources/pod?entityId=", id)})

The query returns a result of:

[
  {
    "Workload": {
      "type": "link",
      "text": "<ENTITY_NAME>",
      "url": "https://<ENVIRONMENT_URL>/ui/apps/dynatrace.kubernetes/resources/pod?entityId=<ENTITY_ID>"
    }
  }
]

Help & Support

This Backstage integration is an open source project. The features are fully supported by Dynatrace.

Get help:

• Ask a question in the product forums

Open a GitHub issue to:

• Report minor defects, minor items, or typos
• Ask for improvements or changes
• Ask any questions related to the community effort
• Contribute as per our Contribution guidelines

SLAs don't apply for GitHub tickets.

Customers can open a ticket on the Dynatrace support portal to:

• Get support from the Dynatrace technical support engineering team
• Manage and resolve product related technical issues

SLAs apply according to the customer's support level.

Contributing

Everyone is welcome to contribute to this repository. See our contributing guidelines, raise issues or submit pull requests.