Platform engineering is the discipline of designing and building toolchains and workflows that enable self-service capabilities for software engineering organizations in the cloud-native era.

Platform Engineering

set the channel description: Created this channel for sharing and leveraging various resources available to kickstart and continue building Internal Developer Platforms, a.k.a IDPs.

Hi I am evaluating a couple of tools including `<https://clutch.sh/docs/about/what-is-clutch>` and Backstage. Anybody having prior experience running/building this?

My previous team stood up and developed the Backstage for my company. I've never looked at clutch. What questions do you have?

<@U03K766FKUZ> We are building platform engineering capability and I am currently scanning the space for all resources that can help kickstart. At this point I am all open to learn how teams are doing this, what tools, what principles etc. Any pointers to blogs/notes on how *not* to do will help us.
How hard is Backstage to manage and operate? Is the current documentation sufficient to instantiate something internally?

The documentation is decent but doesn't provide in my opinion enough to productionalize it. Things like proper security and operational rigor are up to you to decide.

Also adding onto the Backstage experience!

We have <https://medium.com/@eric.irwin/decentralized-system-models-in-backstage-bdfd836139a7|a medium article> written up about our use case around measuring operational excellence and some of our principals when setting up our system models. Just another data point for backstage :smile:

&gt; How hard is Backstage to manage and operate?
I think this will really come down to how much you want to customize backstage out of the box, and what you aim to do with it.

&gt; Is the current documentation sufficient to instantiate something internally?
For sure more than enough to get something going internally to check it out!

<https://backstage.io/docs/features/software-templates/|The software templating> capability is probably going to be the major point of contact point for building a IDP. It not only lets you scaffold software but also lets you write/use actions like using git, making http requests to other services, or run a cloud pipeline.

There is also <https://github.com/kubevela-contrib/backstage-plugin-kubevela> and <https://www.syntasso.io/post/kratix-and-backstage-a-perfect-pair> for a some other approaches on using backstage.

I’d be remise to not throw out the <https://demo.backstage.io/catalog?filters%5Bkind%5D=component&amp;filters%5Buser%5D=owned|backstage demo site> as well to kinda get an experience of what backstage might be like out of the box with some demo data without templating.

<#C04RTHNHBKL|idp-resources>
I came across this list of resources(not limited) that may be helpful to you all - <https://platformengineering.org/platform-tooling>

<#C04RTHNHBKL|idp-resources>

Check this exhaustive list of CNCF resources - <https://landscape.cncf.io>

IDP demo webinar with Kunal Kushawaha <https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:7043210977479131136/>

Learned at KubeCon that there is a CNCF TAG that deal with the Platform topic, and’s they made a white paper :
<https://tag-app-delivery.cncf.io/whitepapers/platforms/|https://tag-app-delivery.cncf.io/whitepapers/platforms/>

Hi all,
Has anyone here tried backstage ? what complexity did that bring for development and maintenance?
or is Port better ?

Hi Tushar, I'm Ella from Port :blush:
I thought it may interest you to check out this Port vs Backstage comparison: <https://www.getport.io/compare/backstage-vs-port>

Backstage is a framework for building a developer portal. It is complex to implement and maintain and has a very high TCO (high TCO was not acceptable). It also lacks out-of-the-box functionality offered by leading specialist vendors.  Tried it but wasn't for our needs, end up going for  Configure8 (<http://configure8.io|configure8.io>)

Thanks <@U05HLNVB199> I'll give it a spin

<@U058DHZC5LP> I work for OpsLevel and we have an out-of-the-box IDP, you can grab a trial on the website: <http://opslevel.com|opslevel.com>

Curious to hear your feedback if you decide to try us out!

Thanks <@U0467RHJB33> I'll give it a spin.

Hi all, I'm one of the founders of <http://cortex.io|cortex.io> – a full-featured off the shelf IDP with catalogs, scorecards, scaffolder, and over 40 native integrations. Wanted to share a pretty exciting launch which is our own plugin system, similar to the plugin system in Backstage, which allows you to build your own devx on top of our platform. Pretty proud of this release and would love to get your feedback :slightly_smiling_face: <https://www.cortex.io/post/introducing-cortex-plugins-and-customization>

:wave: Hey folks - thought y'all might like this resource that helps platform engineers which IDP to choose based on unique needs. It also has a <https://www.notion.so/Checklist-Choosing-the-best-internal-dev-portal-for-your-team-3563c6db068146ce8a1df28193d896cb|Notion template> that you can copy for a scorecard while you're choosing the best vendor.

<https://www.opslevel.com/resources/guide-to-choosing-an-internal-developer-portal>