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VMware Cloud Authentication Provider

Backstage comes with an auth provider module to allow users to sign-in with their VMware Cloud account. This page describes some actions within the VMware Cloud Console and within a Backstage app required to enable this capability.

Create an OAuth App in the VMware Cloud Console​

  1. Log in to the VMware Cloud Console.
  2. Navigate to Identity & Access Management > OAuth Apps and click the Owned Apps tab -- if you are not an Organization Owner or Administrator but only a Member, you will not see this nav entry unless the Developer check box is selected for your role (see the Organization roles and permissions docs for details).
  3. Click Create App, choose 'Web/Mobile app' and click Continue.
  4. Use default settings except:
    • App Name and App Description of your choosing.
    • Redirect URIs: ${baseUrl}/api/auth/vmwareCloudServices/handler/frame where baseUrl is the URL where your Backstage backend can be reached; note that VMware Cloud does not support the combination of an http:// scheme and a localhost hostname, so when testing locally it may help to set your backend base URL to http://127.0.0.1:7007.
    • Refresh Token: check Issue refresh token; refresh tokens are required to prevent forcing users to re-login when they refresh their browser.
    • Define Scopes: check OpenID at the bottom.
  5. Click Create.
  6. Take note of the App ID in the resulting modal; this is the client ID to be used by Backstage.

Configuration​

Add the following to your app-config.yaml under the root auth configuration:

auth:
  session:
    secret: your session secret
  environment: development
  providers:
    vmwareCloudServices:
      development:
        clientId: ${APP_ID}
        organizationId: ${ORG_ID}
        signIn:
          resolvers:
            # typically you would pick one of these
            - resolver: emailMatchingUserEntityProfileEmail
            - resolver: emailLocalPartMatchingUserEntityName
            - resolver: vmwareCloudSignInResolvers

Where APP_ID refers to the ID retrieved when creating the OAuth App, and ORG_ID is the long ID of the Organization in VMware Cloud for which you wish to enable sign-in.

Note

VMware Cloud requires OAuth Apps to use PKCE when performing authorization code flows; the library used by this provider requires the use of Express session middleware to do this. Therefore the value your session secret under auth.session.secret should be replaced with a long, complex and unique string which will act as a key for signing session cookies set by Backstage.

Resolvers​

This provider includes several resolvers out of the box that you can use:

  • emailMatchingUserEntityProfileEmail: Matches the email address from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching spec.profile.email. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
  • emailLocalPartMatchingUserEntityName: Matches the local part of the email address from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching name. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
  • vmwareCloudSignInResolvers: Matches the email address from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching spec.profile.email. If no match is found it will sign in the user without associating with a catalog user.
Note

The resolvers will be tried in order, but will only be skipped if they throw a NotFoundError.

If these resolvers do not fit your needs you can build a custom resolver, this is covered in the Building Custom Resolvers section of the Sign-in Identities and Resolvers documentation.

Backend Installation​

To add the provider to the backend we will first need to install the package by running this command:

from your Backstage root directory
yarn --cwd packages/backend add @backstage/plugin-auth-backend-module-vmware-cloud-provider

Then we will need to this line:

in packages/backend/src/index.ts
backend.add(import('@backstage/plugin-auth-backend'));
backend.add(
  import('@backstage/plugin-auth-backend-module-vmware-cloud-provider'),
);

Adding the provider to the Backstage frontend​

To add the provider to the frontend, add the vmwareCloudAuthApiRef reference and SignInPage component as shown in Adding the provider to the sign-in page.