Docs

About the Platform

What this page is for

What Fenwave is, how its parts fit together, and where the platform’s own identity values live. This is background rather than a task — read it when you want the shape of the thing rather than a procedure.

Before you start

Nothing. This page describes the platform rather than configuring it.

The platform

Fenwave is an internal developer platform built on Backstage. It brings together four things that usually live in four different tools:

Concern What Fenwave provides
Knowing what exists A catalog of components, systems and APIs with owners, plus documentation served next to the code
Creating Templates that scaffold a repository, wire CI/CD and register the result
Running Environment tiers, releases with runbooks, and direct cluster access
Governing Role-based access scoped to specific clusters and environments

The value is not any one of these. It is that they refer to the same registry: the component you find in the catalog is the one you deploy, and the permission that lets you deploy it is scoped to the cluster it runs on.

How the pieces relate

Settings › Infrastructure     clusters and environments are registered here
        ↓
Settings › Development        repositories and CI/CD are connected to them
        ↓
Build                         templates create components against that setup
        ↓
Explore                       components appear in the catalog with owners
        ↓
Deploy                        components run in the registered environments
        ↓
Cost / Analytics              what that costs and how well it is going

Read top to bottom, this is also the setup order for a new install — see the Quick Start Guide.

Where the version and support details live

The platform name, version, slogan, description, documentation URL and support contact are shown in Settings › General. They are deliberately not repeated here: a value transcribed into documentation is a value that goes stale silently.

Walkthroughs

Nothing to perform here. For what the platform is made of, see Components.

Scenario

Explaining Fenwave to someone deciding whether to adopt it.

  1. Start with the table above — four concerns, one registry. The single-registry point is the thing that distinguishes a platform from four tools with links between them.
  2. Show them Explore › Catalog filtered by an owner: this is the “what do we have” answer they currently get by asking around.
  3. Show Explore › Architecture for the same set. The blast-radius question is usually the one that lands.
  4. Show Settings › People & Access › Policies and the cluster and environment scoping. Governance that is real rather than aspirational is what separates this from a wiki.
  5. Be honest about the cost: everything above depends on things being registered. A component nobody registers is invisible in all of it. The platform repays the discipline, and does nothing without it.

When it doesn’t work

Symptom Cause How to check Fix
The catalog is nearly empty Components have not been registered Projects Register them
Deploy shows nothing No clusters or environments registered Infrastructure Register and validate them
The version shown is not what you expect It comes from the deployed build, not from a setting Settings › General Check which image is deployed

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