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Observability

This article briefly describes the observability options that are available to a Backstage integrator.

Datadog RUM Events

See how to install Datadog Events in your app here

Logging

The backend supplies a central winston root logger that plugins are expected to use for their logging needs. In the default production setup, it emits structured JSON logs on stdout, with a field "service": "backstage" and also tagged on a per-plugin basis. Plugins that want to more finely specify what part of their processes that emitted the log message should add a "component" field to do so.

An example log line could look as follows:

{
"service": "backstage",
"type": "plugin",
"plugin": "catalog",
"component": "catalog-all-locations-refresh",
"level": "info",
"message": "Locations Refresh: Refreshing location bootstrap:bootstrap"
}

Health Checks

The example backend in the Backstage repository supplies a very basic health check endpoint on the /healthcheck route. You may add such a handler to your backend as well, and supply your own logic to it that fits your particular health checking needs.