Mastering Kratix: Building Composable Internal Developer Platforms on Kubernetes

We have reached the end of our journey. In this final episode, we combine everything we have learned—Kratix, Crossplane, ArgoCD, Vault, Prometheus, and Backstage—into a single, comprehensive reference architecture diagram that you can use to build your enterprise IDP.

While kubectl is powerful, it is not a Developer Portal. In this episode, we integrate Kratix with Backstage, creating a unified Web UI where developers can browse the service catalog, request infrastructure, and monitor their applications without ever opening a terminal.

Operating a multi-cluster architecture introduces a massive observability challenge. If a Kratix Pipeline fails, the logs are in the Platform cluster. If the physical database fails, the logs are in the Worker cluster. In this episode, we build a centralized monitoring stack using Prometheus and Grafana.

Platform Engineers write code too. When you build a complex Promise, you must compile the Pipeline container, lint the YAML, and safely deploy it to the Platform Cluster. In this episode, we build a robust GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline to automate the lifecycle of Kratix Promises.

We have spent 7 episodes architecting a massively scalable, secure backend. But if the Developer Experience (DX) is terrible, no one will use it. In this episode, we switch personas to the Application Developer and explore the day-to-day workflow of consuming a Kratix Platform.

GitOps has one fatal flaw: You cannot commit secrets to a Git repository. When Kratix generates a Redis password during a Pipeline execution, how does it securely deliver that password to the Worker Cluster? In this episode, we solve the GitOps secrets problem using HashiCorp Vault and ESO.

If your organization prefers Flux over ArgoCD, Kratix supports it natively without any modifications to the Platform Cluster. Because Kratix simply writes standard YAML to a Git repository, any GitOps controller can act as the delivery agent. In this episode, we configure FluxCD on the Worker Cluster.

In this episode, we learn HOW to execute the GitOps pull model in practice. We will configure ArgoCD on a Worker Cluster to continuously sync the Redis StatefulSet YAML generated by our Kratix Pipeline, ensuring you understand the mechanics of the State Store.

Enough theory. It’s time to look at the YAML. In this episode, we build the E-Commerce Redis Promise line-by-line. We will examine the API schema, the Pipeline configuration, and the Destination selectors that make multi-cluster deployment possible, ensuring you understand exactly how Kratix executes your logic.

Crossplane uses GitOps to provision AWS infrastructure. Kratix uses GitOps to orchestrate Promises. This frequently leads to severe architectural confusion for teams adopting Platform Engineering. In this episode, we define the exact boundary between the two tools and learn how they complement each other in a Production IDP.