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FAQ

What is OPA on AWS?​

Orchestrate Platforms and Applications (OPA) on AWS is an open source reference implementation that ties together AWS services into an enterprise ready solution. By abstracting AWS services, OPA on AWS allows application developers to focus on what they do best – writing application logic code, all while allowing platform engineering teams to enforce internal guardrails and best practices at scale. OPA on AWS provides a productive and efficient experience for non-cloud developers and allows for integrations with your current tooling. It is fast, safe, fun, and at-scale.


What does OPA on AWS do?​

OPA on AWS provides a comprehensive Internal Developer Platform solution. It allows developers to write application logic, on AWS, without having to know how to provision and manage AWS services. OPA on AWS also allows platform engineering teams to easily manage all the resources and applications that run on AWS.


What was the motivation behind building OPA on AWS?​

Enterprise are challenged to integrate with AWS while adhering to their standards, security guardrails and compliance. In addition, cloud engineers are a scarce resource that does not scale. Using platform engineering, this gap is shortened, thus enabling enterprise to improve their developer experience and scales the use of AWS Services securely.


Is OPA on AWS an AWS Service?​

No, OPA on AWS is not a managed service. It is an open source platform reference implementation supporting integration with AWS Services for enterprises. Since OPA on AWS is using native AWS Services, it provides all the benefits and scale that AWS can offer along with a productive developer experience


Who is the audience for OPA on AWS?​

OPA on AWS binds the AWS services into an enterprise ready offering. It was originally built for financial enterprise use cases to accommodate for security and regulatory compliance needs and the necessity for scale and efficiency. It is applicable for every company interested in scaling while still keeping the same tooling and additional internal and external standards.


What support do you offer? How can I learn to use OPA on AWS?​

OPA on AWS is accompanied with documentation, detailed ReadMes, and a series of YouTube videos. All of these resources can help you learn more about the solution and get started. For any issue beyond the current available information, you can reach us by opening an issue via GitHub


What is OPA on AWS’s license?​

OPA on AWS is licensed as Apache-2.0.


What are the benefits for using OPA?​

A better developer experience and faster way to scale the use of AWS Services for enterprises. Please see the full features page


What are the requirements to get started on OPA?​

Please read our documentation Getting started


What is the price of OPA?​

OPA on AWS is free open source project. However the use of AWS Services is as per the service pricing of each service you use


Is there a roadmap?​

Please see the features section under features


Why is OPA on AWS integrated with Backstage?​

Backstage.io is a mature CNCF project, and has been widely adopted across the market. By integrating with Backstage.io, users of OPA on AWS can benefit from +100 plugins and a large community (+20k). This allows customers to customize their environments, and keep existing tooling, while still working on AWS. Building on Backstage.io has helped to expedite the journey of OPA on AWS, and bring more value to our customers.


How can OPA on AWS accelerate applications migration?​

Please see our Migration page


What happens if Backstage.io releases an update? How will OPA on AWS accommodate updates?​

OPA on AWS lists the latest tested version of Backstage.io with OPA on AWS plugins. The solution is decoupled from Backstage.io, therefore it should be possible to upgrade backstage and install the plugins afterwards. However, Backstage.io may introduce breaking changes and therefore we publish the last tested plugin version.


How can I report bugs or submit feature requests?​

Please submit any issues and requests via the public repository


Will AWS supply templates or examples? How will they be maintained?​

There are many samples and examples provided, please see this table.


Will this make the DevOps team obsolete?​

OPA on AWS helps scale DevOps teams and enables the development teams to own their infrastructure and applications and reduce the bottleneck from the DevOps team.


How secure is this solution? Has it been reviewed by a third party?​

The solution was designed for a large financial customer adhering to financial services customer regulation and AWS best practices. The solution have been through an AWS security review.


How does OPA on AWS differ from AWS console?​

OPA on AWS aims to provide a productive, efficient, and delightful developer experience by providing a simplified way to use AWS. By nature, the AWS console will enable the skilled cloud engineer to fine-tune and define their needs, however, OPA on AWS will enable a persona to build on AWS without having to know how to operate all the knobs and dials.


What is an Internal Development Platform (IDP)?​

Please refer to platformengineering.org


Does OPA on AWS have a CLI?​

Not yet - Please see features


Have an additional question? Reach out to us at fsi-pace-pe@amazon.com