AWS Platform Engineering with Backstage

In the modern cloud-native landscape, the "you build it, you run it" mantra has often devolved into "you build it, you're overwhelmed by it." As organizations scale their AWS footprints, developers are frequently bogged down by the complexities of VPC configurations, IAM policies, and Kubernetes manifest management. This cognitive overload is the primary driver behind the rise of Platform Engineering. At the heart of this movement is Backstage, an open-source Internal Developer Portal (IDP) originally created by Spotify, which acts as a centralized "single pane of glass" for managing the software ecosystem.

Integrating Backstage with AWS allows platform teams to codify "Golden Paths"—standardized, secure, and pre-approved workflows for deploying infrastructure. Instead of developers opening Jira tickets for an S3 bucket or an EKS cluster, they use the Backstage Software Catalog to self-serve. This shift doesn't just improve developer experience (DevEx); it ensures that every resource created follows organizational compliance standards, utilizes approved AMIs, and includes mandatory cost-allocation tags by default.

For a senior architect, the goal of implementing Backstage on AWS is to bridge the gap between high-level developer abstractions and low-level AWS resource management. By leveraging the Backstage Scaffolder alongside services like AWS Proton or the AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), platform teams can transform the AWS Management Console from a manual playground into a controlled, automated backend that powers a seamless developer journey.

Core Architecture and AWS Integration

The architecture of a production-grade Backstage implementation on AWS typically follows a decoupled pattern. The Backstage backend, usually running on Amazon EKS or AWS App Runner, interacts with the AWS API through a series of specialized plugins. The "Software Catalog" serves as the source of truth, pulling entity metadata from GitHub/GitLab and resource status directly from AWS.

The integration relies heavily on the aws-auth provider and the Backstage AWS plugins. The backstage-plugin-aws suite provides specific modules for visualizing S3 buckets, Lambda functions, and EKS clusters directly within the entity page. This visibility is crucial; it allows a developer to see the health of their service's underlying AWS infrastructure without ever leaving the portal.

Implementation: Custom Scaffolder Actions

The true power of Backstage lies in the Scaffolder. While the default actions handle basic repository creation, a production AWS environment requires custom actions to interface with AWS services. Below is a TypeScript example of a custom Backstage Scaffolder action designed to trigger an AWS Proton environment deployment, ensuring that infrastructure follows a predefined template.

import { createTemplateAction } from '@backstage/plugin-scaffolder-node';
import { ProtonClient, CreateEnvironmentCommand } from "@aws-sdk/client-proton";

export const createAwsProtonEnvironmentAction = () => {
  return createTemplateAction<{
    templateName: string;
    templateMajorVersion: string;
    environmentName: string;
    spec: string;
    region: string;
  }>({
    id: 'aws:proton:create-environment',
    description: 'Provisions a new AWS environment using AWS Proton',
    schema: {
      input: {
        type: 'object',
        required: ['templateName', 'environmentName', 'spec'],
        properties: {
          templateName: { type: 'string', title: 'Proton Template Name' },
          environmentName: { type: 'string', title: 'Target Environment Name' },
          spec: { type: 'string', title: 'Proton Spec (YAML)' },
          region: { type: 'string', title: 'AWS Region' },
        },
      },
    },
    async handler(ctx) {
      const { templateName, environmentName, spec, region } = ctx.input;
      const client = new ProtonClient({ region: region || 'us-east-1' });

      ctx.logger.info(`Initiating Proton environment: ${environmentName}`);

      try {
        const command = new CreateEnvironmentCommand({
          name: environmentName,
          templateName: templateName,
          templateMajorVersion: "1",
          spec: spec,
        });

        const response = await client.send(command);
        ctx.logger.info(`Environment creation started: ${response.environment?.arn}`);
        
        ctx.output('environmentArn', response.environment?.arn);
      } catch (error) {
        ctx.logger.error(`Failed to create Proton environment: ${error}`);
        throw error;
      }
    },
  });
};

This action can then be referenced in a template.yaml file, allowing developers to fill out a simple form that triggers a standardized infrastructure deployment. By abstracting the ProtonClient call, the platform team can inject mandatory tags, security groups, and logging configurations behind the scenes.

Best Practices for AWS Platform Engineering

When choosing between different AWS integration patterns, architects must balance flexibility with control.

Performance and Cost Optimization

A significant risk of self-service portals is "resource sprawl." If developers can spin up resources with a click, cloud costs can spiral. Backstage must be configured to provide cost transparency. By integrating the cost-insights plugin with AWS Cost Explorer data, developers see the financial impact of their services.

The following sequence illustrates the "Cost-Aware Provisioning" flow, where the platform checks for budget headroom before finalizing a resource request.

To optimize performance, Backstage should use a "pull-through" cache for the Software Catalog. Instead of querying the AWS SDK on every page load, use a scheduled ingestion processor that updates an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL database. This reduces API throttling risks and ensures the UI remains responsive even with thousands of resources.

Monitoring and Production Patterns

In production, the lifecycle of an AWS resource is rarely static. Backstage should reflect the real-time state of resources. Using Amazon EventBridge, you can stream resource change notifications (e.g., an EKS node scaling or an RDS instance failing) to a webhook that updates the Backstage entity metadata.

This state management ensures that the portal is not just a directory, but an active monitoring tool. Integrating CloudWatch RUM (Real User Monitoring) into the Backstage frontend itself further allows platform teams to track which templates are most successful and where developers are encountering friction in the self-service process.

Conclusion

AWS Platform Engineering with Backstage represents a paradigm shift from manual infrastructure management to a product-centric approach. By centralizing AWS resources into a unified Software Catalog and providing secure, templated self-service capabilities, organizations can significantly reduce time-to-market while maintaining high standards of governance. The key to success lies in building custom Scaffolder actions that encapsulate organizational logic and ensuring that cost and health metrics are visible at the point of action. As the platform matures, Backstage becomes more than a tool—it becomes the heartbeat of the developer ecosystem.

References:

• https://backstage.io/docs/features/software-catalog/
• https://aws.amazon.com/proton/
• https://backstage.io/docs/features/software-templates/
• https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/deploying-backstage-on-aws/