Kubecost

Introduction

Kubecost is a plugin to help engineers get information about cost usage/prediction of their deployment.

Setup

Kubecost Installation:

In order to use this Backstage Plugin you have to install Kubecost

• Activate Annotation Emission
• Add Cost Model Cloud or onPremises

Optional: For Network Cost gathering you will need to Network Traffic Cost Allocation network transfer to pods.

Plugin Installation:

Add the plugin to your frontend app:

# From your Backstage root directory
yarn add --cwd packages/app @suxess-it/backstage-plugin-kubecost

Configure Backstage

Adapt app-config.yaml:

Kubecost requires configuration field: kubecost with valid baseUrl to kubecost API.

Optional Settings:

• sharedNamespaces // add shared namespaces, from which cost will be shared across client namespaces
• queryframes // add Duration of time over which to query. Accepts words like today, week, month, yesterday, lastweek, lastmonth; durations like 30m, 12h, 7d ... {more details from official API Reference}(https://docs.kubecost.com/apis/apis-overview/allocation)
• unitprefix // add Currency. Accepts $, €, ...
• fractionDigits // number of fraction digits to show in costs and average values, default is 4.
• annotationDeploymentName // annotation name of the entity's metadata that refers to the Kubernetes label to identify the deployment related to the entity, default is ' kubecost.com/deployment-name'.
• shareTenancyCosts // include shared tenancy costs in the cost calculation, true or false. Default is false.
• aggregate // aggregate costs by controller, true or false. Default is false.
• showDashboardLink // show a message with the direct link to the Kubecost website configured in baseUrl option, true or false . Default is false.

## ./app-config.yaml
kubecost:
  baseUrl: https://<base URL to Kubecost> 
  sharedNamespaces: <comma-separated list of namespaces>
  queryframes: <comma-separated list of queries>(e.g. week,yesterday,month,today,lastweek)
  unitprefix: '<unit>' (e.g. $, €(=default) )
  annotationDeploymentName: 'backstage.io/kubernetes-id'
  shareTenancyCosts: true
  aggregate: true
  showDashboardLink: true

Import Plugin and embed in the entities page:

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

import { 
  BackstagePluginKubecostPage,
  isKubecostAvailable
} from '@suxess-it/backstage-plugin-kubecost';

// ...

// add this section to the place where the serviceEntityPage gets defined
// const serviceEntityPage = (
// ...
    <EntityLayout.Route if={isKubecostAvailable} path="/kubecost" title="Kubecost">
      <BackstagePluginKubecostPage/>
    </EntityLayout.Route>

Display cost information on a component page

Adding the EntityKubecostCard component to an entity's page will display usage to cost of last week.

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

import { 
  EntityKubecostCard,
  isKubecostAvailable
} from '@suxess-it/backstage-plugin-kubecost';

// ...

// add this section to the place where the overviewContent gets defined
// const overviewContent = (
// ... 
    <EntitySwitch>
      <EntitySwitch.Case if={isKubecostAvailable}>
        <EntityKubecostCard />
      </EntitySwitch.Case>
    </EntitySwitch>

Configuration

Kubecost Plugin are correlated to Backstage entities using an annotation added in the entity's catalog-info.yaml file:

annotations:
  <annotationDeploymentName>: my-kubernetes-deployment-name

Please add Label <annotationDeploymentName>:<my-kubernetes-deployment-name> to deployment, then this annotation accepts any valid deploymentname on your k8s Clusters. If the deployment is deployed in multiple kubernetes clusters, the plugin will show the costs of the deployment in every cluster.

TODO

Still a lot of work to be done:

• add additional annotation for namespaces ...