Tools and Technologies for Platform Engineering
Building a robust Internal Developer Platform (IDP) involves selecting and integrating a wide array of tools and technologies. The right choices depend on your organization's specific needs, existing infrastructure, and team expertise. This page explores common categories of tools that form the backbone of modern platform engineering efforts.
The Platform Engineering Tech Stack
The landscape of tools is vast and ever-evolving. The key is to select technologies that work well together to create a seamless and efficient developer experience.
Integration is Key
A successful IDP isn't just a collection of tools, but a well-orchestrated ecosystem where each component complements the others.
Key Technology Categories:
1. Source Control Management (SCM)
Essential for managing code, tracking changes, and enabling collaboration. Examples include:
- Git: The de-facto standard for version control.
- GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket: Platforms providing Git repository hosting, plus features for CI/CD, issue tracking, and more. You can Understand Git and Version Control more deeply through this guide.
2. Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
Automate the build, test, and deployment phases of software development. Popular choices:
- Jenkins: A highly extensible open-source automation server.
- GitLab CI/CD: Integrated CI/CD capabilities within the GitLab platform.
- GitHub Actions: Automate workflows directly from GitHub repositories.
- ArgoCD: A declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. Modern DevOps Practices heavily rely on such tools.
3. Containerization and Orchestration
Package applications and their dependencies, and manage their deployment and scaling. Key technologies:
- Docker: The leading containerization platform.
- Kubernetes (K8s): The dominant container orchestration system. Many platform offerings are built on K8s.
- Red Hat OpenShift: An enterprise Kubernetes platform. For more details, see Mastering Containerization with Docker and Kubernetes.
Choosing the right technology stack is crucial for building a scalable and maintainable platform.
4. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Define and manage infrastructure using code and automation. Tools in this space include:
- Terraform: A popular open-source tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.
- Pulumi: Allows defining infrastructure using general-purpose programming languages.
- Ansible, Chef, Puppet: Configuration management tools often used in conjunction with IaC.
5. Monitoring, Logging, and Observability
Gain insights into system performance and health. Essential for troubleshooting and ensuring reliability:
- Prometheus & Grafana: A common combination for metrics collection and visualization.
- ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana): For centralized logging and analysis.
- Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic: Comprehensive commercial observability platforms.
- OpenTelemetry: An open-source observability framework for generating and collecting telemetry data. For managing complex systems, understanding Microservices Architecture is beneficial.
6. Developer Portals
Provide a unified interface for developers to discover and access tools, services, documentation, and self-service capabilities. Examples:
- Backstage: An open platform for building developer portals, originally created by Spotify.
- OpsLevel, Port, configure8: Commercial developer portal solutions.
7. Cloud Platforms
Public cloud providers offer a vast array of managed services that can be leveraged to build IDPs:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Microsoft Azure
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Selecting the right tools is a critical step in building your platform. It's about creating a synergistic environment that empowers developers and streamlines the path from code to production.
See Platform Engineering in Action: Case Studies