Surviving Backstage with Roadie: A Developer''s Nightmare or Dream?

[@DevOpsToolkit]

Are you using Backstage? What's your experience with it? Is Roadie a good potential replacement for self-managed Backstage?

[@QuadmanSwe]

It is a bit of a curve to get running, but once you understand how it functions it is very easy. Similar critisism as non-kubernetes users have for adopting kubernetes. 10/10 would always use. Haven't tried roadie (but have used their argocd plugin).

[@MrEvgheniDev]

We are using Backstage, for our platform, and I will say, if you start creating IDP based on Backstage, you have to construct it on your own, because is IDP, just you know how it shall works. Otherwise easy to use ready solutions like Port or even Jenkins.

[@DevOpsToolkit]

@MrEvgheniDev I would not say that Port is a ready solution. Quite the contrary.

[@MrEvgheniDev]

@@DevOpsToolkit I just want to say that Backstage is Backstage, and Roadie is Roadie.

[@FernandoAlmeida1973]

I have been working with backstage. I have to say I like it a lot for creating new plugins and having a way to show commonly used information but it's a nightmare to update. Ultimately, it's the only solution yet to do all it does on-premises.

[@roadie_io]

Delighted to see ourselves featured here! We're happy to answer any questions in the comments.

[@MarkusEicher70]

Thank you Viktor. At 3:32 I wanted to quit already. For me as an old Windows GUI guy currently learning NixOS is already almost killing me. Now you tell me that learning Backstage will be even worse than that? Holy macaroni, I will still not let it be. I want to learn using that sh...t because I see the gigantic potential for our planned "IDP as a service" offering. Might never come to life, but I will do it or die trying. 😄Nonetheless many thanks for being here for us. I could not imagine finding a better DevOps learning source. Take care and keep up the good work, please. Kind regards, Markus.

[@nazmakazani2434]

We got Backstage through roadie and it was absolutely the correct choice.

[@dtuite]

Thanks for featuring Roadie!

[@snuggie12]

Definitely one of your funnier videos. No interest in learning TS so we gave up on backstage a couple of years ago. FWIW I see backstage similar to terraform that I can appreciate how difficult it is to support like every vendor under the sun.

[@psi4ick]

Roadie is the publisher of the official Backstage course at the Linux Foundation (home of the CNCF) i guess they are also contributing to the incoming Certified Backstage Associate certification...

[@roadie_io]

This is correct. We have contributed to the certification.

[@cedriclamalle]

Good video, and thanks for the Heads Up about Backstage!

[@grafpoo]

timely, thanks

[@wladyx]

I'm curious to see what alternatives are for Backstage on prem.

[@DevOpsToolkit]

Unfortinately, I don't think there are many. Most of the alternatives are SaaS.

[@psi4ick]

Janus-IDP a.k.a Redhat Developer Portal, VMware developer portal based on Spotify plugins

[@psi4ick]

I forgot AWS Harmonix

[@wladyx]

I knew about Vmware TAP, did not know about Janus and harmonix, thanks

[@wladyx]

There is also cortex that can be deployed on prem

[@gardnerjens]

I think Backstage is a great framework, though as you stated it kinda dont fit into the CNCF -landscape. Developing Backstage for Openshift deployment and as a single image are to very different experience.

[@gardnerjens]

Also i wish Spotify had developed Backstage in Golang.

[@DevOpsToolkit]

I wish backstage is developed in any language but in a way that configurations are not done with the assumptions that we all know that language. Developing plugins is one thing but having to work with typescript just to add an existing plugin is silly. I know that backstage is going in that direction but it's still not there.

[@psi4ick]

@@gardnerjens Backstage framework is currenttly moving to a more declaratives pattern, Redhat paved the way for dynamic plugin. Declarative backend is now stable and plugins developer are migrating fairly fast. Backstage project is in a similar situation as Kubernetes 1.16-1.20 were many old APIs are decommissioned and other stabilizing...

[@edwardpius5367]

As usual, very informative! When will we have something on BackStage proper? Thanks.

[@DevOpsToolkit]

I think there will be multiple videos on backstage proper. I started working on a first one and expect it to go live in a month or two.

[@edwardpius5367]

@@DevOpsToolkit Merci monsieur! Looking forward to it!

[@east4ming]

First thought after watching the video: backstage is ugly, how can a developer put up with this? I'd rather jump around from one tool UI/CLI to another tool UI/CLI.

[@MrEvgheniDev]

👏

[@IvanRizzante]

Thanks for another great video 🎉 I don't use backstage because I believe that no code portals are superior and after I watched the video I didn't change my mind. Port for example with its last crd discovery is amazing and I use it all the time but without competitors it's no fun

[@Eatmykebab]

The problem with roadie is that its very expensive. Its about 15 euro per month per developer, meaning for a 200 developers that 3k dollars a month

[@Eatmykebab]

Im a backstage maintaer at my job, And would LOVE to have roadie instead, but the economics of it is just not feasible. For a larger Org it quickly outprices a single engineer

[@roadie_io]

We've seen plenty of companies out there who have full teams of 3 or 4 engineers working solely on self-hosted Backstage. Over a year, that cost could amount to $600k. Often, everything that team is working to build on top of Backstage, is already available on Roadie. Even if it was $200k/year, Roadie still looks pretty cheap if you compare it to a $600/yr dev team.

[@DevOpsToolkit]

It all depends on how many additional people you would need to put on top of self hosted backstage and where you live. A single engineer can have a total cost of 200k or 300k or more a year.

[@Eatmykebab]

@@DevOpsToolkit In America yes . In Europe a engineer is about 100k a year , maybe 150