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ADR-002: CNOE as Client Control Plane Baseline

Status: Approved

Date: 2026-06-30

Decision

Use the CNOE reference implementation as the foundational stack for every client control plane, extended with 7KGroup-specific components.

Rationale

  • Pre-integrated Backstage ↔ Crossplane ↔ ArgoCD reduces custom glue code
  • CNCF-backed, community-tested patterns
  • Provides a clear upgrade path when CNOE components release new versions
  • Helm chart structure accelerates deployment

Trade-offs

  • CNOE is opinionated; some components may be unnecessary (Dapr, service mesh)
  • Not natively multi-tenant; we solve this at the cluster level

What We Take from CNOE

  • Backstage + Crossplane integration patterns
  • ArgoCD GitOps structure
  • OPA/Gatekeeper policy examples
  • Helm chart baselines

What We Build Ourselves

  • Hiroba Catalog (cloud-agnostic XRDs + CDK8s compositions)
  • Cloud Factory XRD (multi-cloud account provisioning)
  • Fleet GitOps (ArgoCD ApplicationSets across client clusters)
  • Observability pipeline (Alloy → Mimir/Loki)
  • Dex SSO configuration