Keywords: [Amazon Web Services re:Invent 2023, Backstage, Backstage, Plugins, Infrastructure, Developers, Amazon Cloud Technology]
Number of words: 1500, reading time: 8 minutes
video
If the video cannot be played normally, please go to bilibili to watch this video. >> re:Invent 2023 | Change deployment: An in-depth understanding of Backstage_bilibili_bilibili on Amazon Cloud Technology
Introduction
In this forum, join experts from Amazon Cloud and Spotify to understand the complexities of deploying Backstage on Amazon Cloud. This forum is for experienced platform engineers, DevOps professionals, and anyone ready to explore advanced backstage deployment strategies. Backstage is changing the way organizations approach their developer portals by simplifying onboarding, increasing compliance with best practices, and providing a unified view of the organization's operating environment.
Highlights of speech
The following is the essence of this speech compiled by the editor for you. It has a total of 1,200 words and takes about 6 minutes to read. If you want to know more about the content of the speech or watch the full text of the speech, please watch the full video of the speech or the original text of the speech below.
Brian Landis, senior solutions architect at Amazon Cloud Technology, attracted many audiences at Amazon Cloud Technology re:Invent. He shared content at the conference on how to use Backstage to transform deployments in Amazon Cloud Technology. His presentation also included Mihai Larionov from Spotify, as well as colleagues such as Neil Thompson, also at Amazon Cloud Technologies.
Mihai began his speech by reviewing the significant changes in human needs over the long history of the past. These developments seem like just yesterday, from the time our ancestors began learning to master and control fire to the time we power rockets hurtling toward the stars today. Also in a relatively short period of time, from early humans making their first fishing tools to the present day, we have been able to create complex violins and pianos that perfectly represent the sounds of music. The discovery of electricity by flying a kite during a thunderstorm doesn't seem so far away either, especially considering the rise of artificial intelligence just a few centuries later.
As Mihai explains, as human needs continue to evolve, so do our responsibilities. Software developers once focused primarily on programming, but now they need to take on more responsibilities such as distribution, scaling, database management, and reducing cloud costs. This increased mental load requires us to refocus developers on their strength—innovation. The proliferation of developer tools over the past few decades has exacerbated these challenges. The emergence of Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) solves this problem by helping to encourage knowledge sharing through reusable tools. IDP reduces distractions, cognitive load, and churn, ultimately leading to better business outcomes.
According to Mihai, internal developer portals (IDPs) can significantly improve developer productivity. Platform engineering teams have become commonplace in organizations these days, and internal developer portals are no exception. When developing new applications, developers need to consider factors such as security constraints, CI/CD pipelines, network controls, etc. The IDP highlighted in blue serves as the service interface at the core of the stack. Backstage, developed and open sourced by Spotify, is one such IDP layer. It was originally created to solve the confusion in Spotify's rapid growth timeline. Since then, Backstage has gone from a Spotify original to a platform co-improved by a thriving community, after joining the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and seeing exponential community growth.
Mihai said Backstage’s core principles include:
- Provide a single interface that aggregates all information
- Ownership is important - empower teams to own their own services
- Scalability enables the customization needs of each organization
In particular, scalability is considered a unique advantage of Backstage. It follows the "pizza model" - the dough is the open source Backstage core, the toppings are plug-ins that add unique functionality, and the baked pizza is a deployed instance customized by the productivity team. Whether it’s pepperoni or mushrooms, there’s a Backstage plugin for you.
Backstage provides four main features out of the box:
- A software directory for finding things
- Software templates for building new projects
- Technical talks for sharing knowledge
- Cross-platform search for information
Mihai shared data analysis results on Backstage’s impact among Spotify’s more than 6,000 developers. Data shows that developer activity has increased, code changes are deployed faster, and software deployment frequency and longevity have increased.
While Spotify's instance contains approximately 45,000 catalog components, some companies have 4 to 5 times more assets in their Backstage catalog. This proves that Backstage can scale well beyond Spotify's needs.
Finally, Mihai demonstrates some of the key Backstage plugins used by Spotify:
Home - Customizable welcome page. The Spotify team often designs creative names to showcase its autonomous culture. Technology Radar - Visual mapping technology for developers. Software Templates - Reusable templates that simplify project creation. Spotify has over 40 approved templates for backend, frontend, mobile, and more. Sound Check - Plugin for best practice guidance and tracking. Organize into “tracks” and levels to enable gamification adoption. Provide data to track technology initiatives across teams.
In Mihai's demo, he used software templates to easily create backend Go services integrated with GitHub, Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and more in minutes. He highlighted how templates enable developers to focus on writing business logic rather than basic infrastructure.
The software template will automatically register new components into the backend directory. This catalog contains metadata used to model relationships between software components and their infrastructure dependencies. This enables a "software map" behind the scenes to display these relationships.
To close the feedback loop, infrastructure metadata can be exported from the CI/CD system to a backend directory. No manual work is required since the backend integrates natively with various metadata sources.
All in all, Mihai said that with the right tools, developers can be incredibly productive — like a bicycle for the brain. By open-sourcing its backend, Spotify hopes to make these tools available to all developers.
Brian Landis discusses how Amazon Cloud Technology customers like Toyota are using the backend to transform deployments. By standardizing backend templates across 25 teams, Toyota reduced new project setup time from 8-12 weeks to 2-4 weeks, saving approximately $250,000 per team. Toyota also improves cloud optimization through cost transparency in the backend. After they adopt backend, they will move from quarterly to weekly deployments.
Amazon Cloud Technology supports the backend by providing IAM integration to ensure that the backend can securely manage Amazon Cloud Technology resources. Amazon Cloud Technology has also released plug-ins, including:
- Amazon Cloud Technology Proton - Manage infrastructure and deployment
- Amazon Cloud Technology Code Services - Integrate CodePipeline, CodeBuild and CodeDeploy
When building an internal developer platform, Brian recommends:
Use landing zones to segment accounts and host Backstage. Simplify complexity for developers with Backstage with orchestrators like Kubernetes and Terraform. Start small and assess its value with early adopters. Involve developers first, then provide access to dashboard creators. Enable data scientists to use notebooks and enable the entire enterprise to participate in Backstage. Build Backstage as a product that your team is responsible for.
Other best practices include writing coding templates, tracking costs, providing backstage training, carefully advancing organizational change, eliminating technical debt, and planning for innovation. Brian said the Center of Excellence team typically turns to Backstage to meet their needs. Tailoring Backstage to your company can also boost adoption.
Next, Neil Thompson discusses Backstage’s infrastructure model:
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In software templates, combine infrastructure as code with application code to start new projects. Automatically feed infrastructure metadata to the Backstage directory.
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Deliver organizational best practices directly to developers through Tech Insights and SoundCheck plugins. For example, security hubs and architectural tools can be integrated.
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Create a plug-in to display Amazon Cloud Technology resources in Backstage. Use Amazon Cloud configuration to aggregate cross-account resources and integrate them into the Backstage directory.
Neil recommends that customers provide feedback on which Amazon Cloud technology integrations will be most valuable to their Backstage implementation.
Overall, the speakers provided a deep dive into Backstage's capabilities, benefits to developers, and effective infrastructure integration strategies. Key topics include improving developer productivity, codifying organizational disciplines, integrating infrastructure management, and customizing Backstage for each enterprise's needs. Mikhail and Brian shared customer cases like Spotify and Toyota, which are using Backstage to transform their deployments on Amazon Cloud Technology.
Here are some highlights from the speech:
With the development of an in-house distribution platform, developers are able to focus on innovation, thereby reducing cognitive load and increasing knowledge sharing.
Spotify's Backstage project aims to organize infrastructure and has now become an open source community project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
Using a pizza metaphor, Backstage's scalability is like the combination of dough (open source core) and various toppings (plug-ins).
At the same time, Amazon Cloud Technology is working on exploring more general integration methods, such as using services such as Amazon Cloud Technology Config to aggregate resources across accounts and discover and ingest them in Backstage.
After the speaker finished discussing the relevant content of Backstage, he invited the audience to ask questions later.
Summarize
The speech introduced in detail the open source developer portal Backstage created by Spotify, which aims to improve internal tools and developer work experience. As a single-entry dashboard, Backstage helps developers manage infrastructure, view metrics, and implement best practices.
Spotify's speakers described in detail how Backstage is shared and used internally, with special emphasis on the portal's key features such as software templates, documentation and government plug-ins. He also highlighted Backstage's scalability through its plug-in architecture.
Next, the speaker discussed best practices for deploying Backstage on Amazon Cloud Technology, including infrastructure patterns and integration methods. Key recommendations include using Fargate and Aurora databases, connecting OpenSearch with S3 for search capabilities, and taking full advantage of Amazon Cloud Technology's service plug-ins.
Several customers shared their success stories on how they use Backstage to enable developer self-service, improve efficiency, and optimize cloud costs. Speakers emphasized the importance of building a community around Backstage and customizing it to meet specific organizational needs.
Original speech
Transforming deployment: Deep dive into Backstage on AWS-CSDN博客
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