Kiali Service Mesh

Configure, visualize, validate and troubleshoot your mesh

NPM

Kiali plugin for Backstage

The Kiali Plugin This plugin exposes information about your entity-specific ServiceMesh objects.

Capabilities​

The Kiali plugin has the following capabilities:

• Overview
  • Metrics by namespace
  • Health by namespace
  • Canary info
  • Istio Config warnings
• Worklist

For administrators​

Setting up the Kiali plugin​

Prerequisites​

• The following annotation is added to the entity's catalog-info.yaml file to identify whether an entity contains the Kubernetes resources:

  annotations:
    ...
  
    backstage.io/kubernetes-namespace: <RESOURCE_NS>
  

  For now we support kubernetes-namespace due Kiali works in namespace level. We expect to support kubernetes-label-selector and kubernetes-id

• The following annotation is added to the catalog-info.yaml file of entity to view the latest PipelineRun in the CI/CD tab of the application:

  janus-idp.io/kiali-enabled: 'true'
  

Setting up the Kiali frontend package​

1. Install the Kiali plugin using the following commands:

   yarn workspace app add @janus-idp/backstage-plugin-kiali
   

2. Select the components that you want to use, such as:

   • KialiPage: This is a standalone page or dashboard displaying all namespaces in the mesh. You can add KialiPage to packages/app/src/App.tsx file as follows:

     packages/app/src/App.tsx

     import { KialiPage } from '@janus-idp/backstage-plugin-kiali';
     
     const routes = (
       <FlatRoutes>
         {/* ... */}
         <Route path="/kiali" element={<KialiPage />} />
       </FlatRoutes>
     );
     

     You can also update navigation in packages/app/src/components/Root/Root.tsx as follows:

     packages/app/src/components/Root/Root.tsx

     import { KialiIcon } from '@janus-idp/backstage-plugin-kiali';
     
     export const Root = ({ children }: PropsWithChildren<{}>) => (
       <SidebarPage>
         <Sidebar>
           <SidebarGroup label="Menu" icon={<MenuIcon />}>
             {/* ... */}
             <SidebarItem icon={KialiIcon} to="kiali" text="Kiali" />
           </SidebarGroup>
           {/* ... */}
         </Sidebar>
         {children}
       </SidebarPage>
     );
     

   • EntityKialiContent: This component is a React context provided for Kiali data, which is related to the current entity. The EntityKialiContent component is used to display any data on the React components mentioned in packages/app/src/components/catalog/EntityPage.tsx:

   packages/app/src/components/catalog/EntityPage.tsx

   import { EntityKialiContent } from '@janus-idp/backstage-plugin-kiali';
   
   const serviceEntityPage = (
     <EntityLayout>
       {/* ... */}
       <EntityLayout.Route path="/kiali" title="kiali">
         <EntityKialiContent />
       </EntityLayout.Route>
     </EntityLayout>
   );
   

3. Configure you app-config.yaml with kiali configuration

catalog:
  providers:
    kiali:
      # Required. Kiali endpoint
      url: ${KIALI_ENDPOINT}
      # Optional. Required by token authentication
      serviceAccountToken: ${KIALI_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN}
      # Optional. defaults false
      skipTLSVerify: true
      # Optional
      caData: ${KIALI_CONFIG_CA_DATA}
      # Optional. Local path to CA file
      caFile: ''
      # Optional. Time in seconds that session is enabled, defaults to 1 minute.
      sessionTime: 60

Authentication methods:

• anonymous Read docs about this authentication in kiali.io
• token Read docs about this authentication in kiali.io

The following table describes the parameters that you can configure to enable the plugin under catalog.providers.keycloakOrg.<ENVIRONMENT_NAME> object in the app-config.yaml file:

For users​

1. Open your Backstage application and select a component from the Catalog page.

2. Check that you entity has the annotations.

3. Go to the Kiali tab.

   The Kiali tab displays the Overview view associated to a Servicemesh.

   

   There is also a Go To Kiali Graph option at the bottom of each card, which redirects you to the Graph in the Kiali Standalone.

Red Hat Developer Hub​

If you want to know more about Kiali in Red Hat Developer Hub follow these instructions

Development​

To develop/contribute in kiali plugin follow these instructions