Red Hat Summit Red Hat SummitSupportConsoleDevelopersStart a trialContact

Monitoring and logging

Red Hat Developer Hub 1.4

Tracking performance and capturing insights with monitoring and logging tools in Red Hat Developer Hub

Red Hat Customer Content Services

Abstract

As a Red Hat Developer Hub Operations or Project Manager, you can monitor performance and gather insights using Red Hat Developer Hub's monitoring and logging tools.

In OpenShift Container Platform, metrics are exposed through an HTTP service endpoint under the 

/metrics
canonical name. You can create a 
ServiceMonitor
custom resource (CR) to scrape metrics from a service endpoint in a user-defined project.

You can enable and view metrics for an Operator-installed Red Hat Developer Hub instance from the Developer perspective of the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

Prerequisites

  • Your OpenShift Container Platform cluster has monitoring for user-defined projects enabled.
  • You have installed Red Hat Developer Hub on OpenShift Container Platform using the Red Hat Developer Hub Operator.
  • You have installed the OpenShift CLI (
    oc
    ).

Procedure

Currently, the Red Hat Developer Hub Operator does not support creating a 

ServiceMonitor
custom resource (CR) by default. You must complete the following steps to create a 
ServiceMonitor
CR to scrape metrics from the endpoint.

  1. Create the 

    ServiceMonitor
    CR as a YAML file: 

    apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
kind: ServiceMonitor
metadata:
  name: <developer_hub_service_monitor_name>
    1 
    
  namespace: <rhdh_namespace_name>
    2 
    
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: <rhdh_cr_name>
    3 
    
    app.kubernetes.io/name: Backstage
spec:
  namespaceSelector:
    matchNames:
      - <rhdh_namespace_name>
    4 
    
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app.kubernetes.io/instance: <deployment_name>
    5 
    
      app.kubernetes.io/name: <rhdh_cr_type>
    6 
    
  endpoints:
  - port: http-metrics
    path: '/metrics'
    1
    The name of your ServiceMonitor resource, for example, developer_hub_service_monitor.
    2
    The namespace where your ServiceMonitor will live, for example, my-rhdh-project.
    3
    The label name identifying the ServiceMonitor CR instance, for example, my-rhdh-custom-resource.
    4
    The namespace where your RHDH instance is installed, for example, my-rhdh-project.
    5
    The name of your RHDH deployment, for example, developer-hub.
    6
    The name of your RHDH application, for example, backstage.
    Note

    spec.selector.matchLabels
    configuration must match the labels of your RHDH installation.

  2. Apply the 

    ServiceMonitor
    CR by running the following command: 

    oc apply -f <filename>

Verification

  1. From the Developer perspective in the OpenShift Container Platform web console, select the Observe view.
  2. Click the Metrics tab to view metrics for Red Hat Developer Hub pods.
  3. From the Developer perspective in the OpenShift Container Platform web console, click Project > Services and verify the labels for 
    backstage-developer-hub
    .

You can enable and view metrics for a Red Hat Developer Hub Helm deployment from the Developer perspective of the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

Prerequisites

  • Your OpenShift Container Platform cluster has monitoring for user-defined projects enabled.
  • You have installed Red Hat Developer Hub on OpenShift Container Platform using the Helm chart.

Procedure

  1. From the Developer perspective in the OpenShift Container Platform web console, select the Topology view.

  2. Click the overflow menu of the Red Hat Developer Hub Helm chart, and select Upgrade.

    helm upgrade

  3. On the Upgrade Helm Release page, select the YAML view option in Configure via, then configure the 

    metrics
    section in the YAML, as shown in the following example: 

    upstream:
# ...
  metrics:
    serviceMonitor:
      enabled: true
      path: /metrics
      port: http-metrics
# ...
    upgrade helm metrics
  4. Click Upgrade.

Verification

  1. From the Developer perspective in the OpenShift Container Platform web console, select the Observe view.
  2. Click the Metrics tab to view metrics for Red Hat Developer Hub pods.

In the Red Hat Developer Hub, monitoring and logging are facilitated through Amazon Web Services (AWS) integration. With features like Amazon CloudWatch for real-time monitoring and Amazon Prometheus for comprehensive logging, you can ensure the reliability, scalability, and compliance of your Developer Hub application hosted on AWS infrastructure.

This integration enables you to oversee, diagnose, and refine your applications in the Red Hat ecosystem, leading to an improved development and operational journey.

2.1. Monitoring with Amazon Prometheus
Copy link

Red Hat Developer Hub provides Prometheus metrics related to the running application. For more information about enabling or deploying Prometheus for EKS clusters, see Prometheus metrics in the Amazon documentation.

To monitor Developer Hub using Amazon Prometheus, you need to create an Amazon managed service for the Prometheus workspace and configure the ingestion of the Developer Hub Prometheus metrics. For more information, see Create a workspace and Ingest Prometheus metrics to the workspace sections in the Amazon documentation.

After ingesting Prometheus metrics into the created workspace, you can configure the metrics scraping to extract data from pods based on specific pod annotations.

2.1.1. Configuring annotations for monitoring
Copy link

You can configure the annotations for monitoring in both Helm deployment and Operator-backed deployment.

Helm deployment

To annotate the backstage pod for monitoring, update your 

values.yaml
file as follows: 

upstream:
  backstage:
    # --- TRUNCATED ---
    podAnnotations:
      prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
      prometheus.io/path: '/metrics'
      prometheus.io/port: '9464'
      prometheus.io/scheme: 'http'
Operator-backed deployment

Procedure

  1. As an administrator of the operator, edit the default configuration to add Prometheus annotations as follows: 

    # Update OPERATOR_NS accordingly
OPERATOR_NS=rhdh-operator
kubectl edit configmap backstage-default-config -n "${OPERATOR_NS}"

  2. Find the 

    deployment.yaml
    key in the ConfigMap and add the annotations to the 
    spec.template.metadata.annotations
    field as follows: 

    deployment.yaml: |-
  apiVersion: apps/v1
  kind: Deployment
  # --- truncated ---
  spec:
    template:
      # --- truncated ---
      metadata:
        labels:
         rhdh.redhat.com/app:  # placeholder for 'backstage-<cr-name>'
        # --- truncated ---
        annotations:
          prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
          prometheus.io/path: '/metrics'
          prometheus.io/port: '9464'
          prometheus.io/scheme: 'http'
  # --- truncated ---
  3. Save your changes.

Verification

To verify if the scraping works:

  1. Use 

    kubectl
    to port-forward the Prometheus console to your local machine as follows: 

    kubectl --namespace=prometheus port-forward deploy/prometheus-server 9090
  2. Open your web browser and navigate to 
    http://localhost:9090
    to access the Prometheus console.
  3. Monitor relevant metrics, such as 
    process_cpu_user_seconds_total
    .

2.2. Logging with Amazon CloudWatch logs
Copy link

Logging within the Red Hat Developer Hub relies on the winston library. By default, logs at the debug level are not recorded. To activate debug logs, you must set the environment variable 

LOG_LEVEL
to debug in your Red Hat Developer Hub instance.

2.2.1. Configuring the application log level
Copy link

You can configure the application log level in both Helm deployment and Operator-backed deployment.

Helm deployment

To update the logging level, add the environment variable 

LOG_LEVEL
to your Helm chart’s 
values.yaml
file: 

upstream:
  backstage:
    # --- Truncated ---
    extraEnvVars:
      - name: LOG_LEVEL
        value: debug
Operator-backed deployment

You can modify the logging level by including the environment variable 

LOG_LEVEL
in your custom resource as follows: 

spec:
  # Other fields omitted
  application:
    extraEnvs:
      envs:
        - name: LOG_LEVEL
          value: debug

2.2.2. Retrieving logs from Amazon CloudWatch
Copy link

The CloudWatch Container Insights are used to capture logs and metrics for Amazon EKS. For more information, see Logging for Amazon EKS documentation.

To capture the logs and metrics, install the Amazon CloudWatch Observability EKS add-on in your cluster. Following the setup of Container Insights, you can access container logs using Logs Insights or Live Tail views.

CloudWatch names the log group where all container logs are consolidated in the following manner: 

/aws/containerinsights/<ClusterName>/application

Following is an example query to retrieve logs from the Developer Hub instance: 

fields @timestamp, @message, kubernetes.container_name
| filter kubernetes.container_name in ["install-dynamic-plugins", "backstage-backend"]

Monitoring and logging are integral aspects of managing and maintaining Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) in Red Hat Developer Hub. With features like Managed Prometheus Monitoring and Azure Monitor integration, administrators can efficiently monitor resource utilization, diagnose issues, and ensure the reliability of their containerized workloads.

3.1. Enabling Azure Monitor metrics
Copy link

To enable managed Prometheus monitoring, use the 

-enable-azure-monitor-metrics
option within either the 
az aks create
or 
az aks update
command, depending on whether you’re creating a new cluster or updating an existing one, such as: 

az aks create/update --resource-group <your-ResourceGroup> --name <your-Cluster> --enable-azure-monitor-metrics

The previous command installs the metrics add-on, which gathers Prometheus metrics. Using the previous command, you can enable monitoring of Azure resources through both native Azure Monitor metrics. You can also view the results in the portal under Monitoring → Insights. For more information, see Monitor Azure resources with Azure Monitor.

Furthermore, metrics from both the Managed Prometheus service and Azure Monitor can be accessed through Azure Managed Grafana service. For more information, see Link a Grafana workspace section.

By default, Prometheus uses the minimum ingesting profile, which optimizes ingestion volume and sets default configurations for scrape frequency, targets, and metrics collected. The default settings can be customized through custom configuration. Azure offers various methods, including using different ConfigMaps, to provide scrape configuration and other metric add-on settings. For more information about default configuration, see Default Prometheus metrics configuration in Azure Monitor and Customize scraping of Prometheus metrics in Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus documentation.

3.2. Configuring annotations for monitoring
Copy link

You can configure the annotations for monitoring Red Hat Developer Hub specific metrics in both Helm deployment and Operator-backed deployment.

Helm deployment

To annotate the backstage pod for monitoring, update your 

values.yaml
file as follows: 

upstream:
  backstage:
    # --- TRUNCATED ---
    podAnnotations:
      prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
      prometheus.io/path: '/metrics'
      prometheus.io/port: '9464'
      prometheus.io/scheme: 'http'
Operator-backed deployment

Procedure

  1. As an administrator of the operator, edit the default configuration to add Prometheus annotations as follows: 

    # Update OPERATOR_NS accordingly
OPERATOR_NS=rhdh-operator
kubectl edit configmap backstage-default-config -n "${OPERATOR_NS}"

  2. Find the 

    deployment.yaml
    key in the ConfigMap and add the annotations to the 
    spec.template.metadata.annotations
    field as follows: 

    deployment.yaml: |-
  apiVersion: apps/v1
  kind: Deployment
  # --- truncated ---
  spec:
    template:
      # --- truncated ---
      metadata:
        labels:
         rhdh.redhat.com/app:  # placeholder for 'backstage-<cr-name>'
        # --- truncated ---
        annotations:
          prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
          prometheus.io/path: '/metrics'
          prometheus.io/port: '9464'
          prometheus.io/scheme: 'http'
  # --- truncated ---
  3. Save your changes.

Verification

To verify if the scraping works, navigate to the corresponding Azure Monitor Workspace and view the metrics under Monitoring → Metrics.

You can access live data logs generated by Kubernetes objects and collect log data in Container Insights within AKS.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed Developer Hub on AKS.

For more information, see Installing Red Hat Developer Hub on Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service.

Procedure

View live logs from your Developer Hub instance
  1. Navigate to the Azure Portal.
  2. Search for the resource group 
    <your-ResourceGroup>
    and locate your AKS cluster 
    <your-Cluster>
    .
  3. Select Kubernetes resources → Workloads from the menu.
  4. Select the 
    <your-rhdh-cr>-developer-hub
    (in case of Helm Chart installation) or 
    <your-rhdh-cr>-backstage
    (in case of Operator-backed installation) deployment.
  5. Click Live Logs in the left menu.

  6. Select the pod.

    Note

    There must be only single pod.

Live log data is collected and displayed.

View real-time log data from the Container Engine
  1. Navigate to the Azure Portal.
  2. Search for the resource group 
    <your-ResourceGroup>
    and locate your AKS cluster 
    <your-Cluster>
    .
  3. Select Monitoring → Insights from the menu.
  4. Go to the Containers tab.
  5. Find the backend-backstage container and click it to view real-time log data as it’s generated by the Container Engine.

Legal Notice
Copy link

Copyright © 2025 Red Hat, Inc.
The text of and illustrations in this document are licensed by Red Hat under a Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license ("CC-BY-SA"). An explanation of CC-BY-SA is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. In accordance with CC-BY-SA, if you distribute this document or an adaptation of it, you must provide the URL for the original version.
Red Hat, as the licensor of this document, waives the right to enforce, and agrees not to assert, Section 4d of CC-BY-SA to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.
Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo, the Red Hat logo, JBoss, OpenShift, Fedora, the Infinity logo, and RHCE are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.
Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and other countries.
Java® is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
XFS® is a trademark of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries.
MySQL® is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States, the European Union and other countries.
Node.js® is an official trademark of Joyent. Red Hat is not formally related to or endorsed by the official Joyent Node.js open source or commercial project.
The OpenStack® Word Mark and OpenStack logo are either registered trademarks/service marks or trademarks/service marks of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries and are used with the OpenStack Foundation's permission. We are not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Red Hat logoGithubredditYoutubeTwitter

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

We help Red Hat users innovate and achieve their goals with our products and services with content they can trust. Explore our recent updates.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. For more details, see the Red Hat Blog.

About Red Hat

We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

Theme

© 2026 Red HatBack to top