Get started with HSF

Welcome to the HSF onboarding guide. Discover how Harness accelerate onboarding and adoption by reducing setup time and maintaining best practices

Pre Deployment of HSF

Prerequisites

Before beginning, ensure you have:

• Access to a Harness Account
• Ability to create an admin level token

If you do not meet all these prerequisites but think your organization could benefit from HSF, please reach out to hsf@harness.io.

Post Deployment of HSF

There will be a lot of resources that are created into your account once HSF is deployed. Be sure to review this document to understand what was created and where it all lives.

Created Resources

Service Account A service ****account named harness-platform-manager is created at the account level. This service account has admin privileges and is responsible for provisioning and managing the resources necessary for running HSF workflows.

Variables To support IDP workflows, account-level variables are created. These variables store key configuration values, including the project name, organization name, connector information, and platform URL. They enable workflows to dynamically locate and interact with the correct components and environments within Harness. The variables created are:

Variable	Description	Example Value
solutions_factory_project	The project name of where Solutions Factory is deployed.	Solutions_Factory
solutions_factory_endpoint	The endpoint of where Solutions Factory is Deployed	https://app.harness.io
solutions_factory_org	The organization of where Solutions Factory is Deployed	Harness_Platform_Management
solutions_factory_template_library_connector	Connector for Harness Template Library	org.Harness_Template_Library_Repo
solutions_factory_template_library_repo	URL of where HTL lives	https://git.harness.io/[accountid]/Harness_Platform_Management/harness-template-library.git
custom_template_library_connector	Connector for Custom Template Library	org.Custom_Harness_Template_Library_Repo
custom_template_library_repo	URL of where Custom Template Library lives	https://git.harness.io/[accountid]/Harness_Platform_Management/custom-harness-template-library.git
enable_hsf_mini_factory	Flag to indicate if IDP workflows will default to leveraging the mini-factory to distribute workloads	false

Organizations All HSF-related resources are organized under a newly created organization named harness-platform-management. This organization serves as the central location for all projects, configurations, and access controls associated with the HSF deployment.

User Groups Within the harness-platform-management organization, two user groups are created: hsf-admin and hsf-user. The hsf-admin group has organization admin privileges and is intended for platform administrators and users managing the implementation of HSF (usually the platform engineering team). This group of users will also be the ones who can approve changes and will get email notifications if this setting is set. The hsf-user group, by contrast, is granted organization viewer privileges and is designed for broader team access to view and use the workflows without elevated permissions.

Secrets Secrets are also created at the organization level to securely manage authentication and access credentials. HSF Platform API Key, stores the secret value associated with the harness-platform-manager service account. This key is managed by a pipeline that automatically handles rotation to maintain security best practices.  hsf_harness_stub_secret_key and hsf_harness_stub_access_key are also created.

Projects Several projects are initialized within the harness-platform-management organization.

• The Solutions Factory project contains all the core pipelines and configurations required to manage HSF.
• The Image Factory project is the target destination for the deployment of CI image factory. In the future it will house all of the HSF image specific factories.
• The Delegate Management project is the target destination for the delegate image factory.

Pipelines The Solutions Factory project includes sixteen pipelines, each designed to perform a specific role in the HSF lifecycle.

• The Deploy Solutions Factory pipeline handles additional configuration tasks related to setting up and managing the HSF deployment. It ensures that the target environment is properly initialized and ready to operate and is used during upgrades and configuration changes.
• The Manage Pilot Light pipeline applies updates and changes to the core HSF framework. It is used to maintain and evolve the foundational infrastructure that supports the overall platform.
• The Mirror Harness Official Solutions Factory Repository pipeline is responsible for cloning and copying data from the official HSF repository into your target Harness account. It also manages the synchronization of updates during future releases, effectively keeping your local copy aligned with the source of truth.
• The Unpack Solutions Factory pipeline unpacks the Solutions Factory.
• The Register IDP Templates pipeline automatically imports all available templates from the harness-template-library and registers them into your IDP instance. This ensures that your IDP has access to the full suite of templates required to power self-service workflows.
• The Register Custom IDP Templates pipeline automatically imports all available templates from the custom-harness-template-library and registers them into your IDP instance.
• The Rotate HSF Token pipeline handles secure token rotation for the harness-platform-manager service account.
• The Create and Manage IACM Workspaces pipeline is invoked at the start of each workflow execution. It provisions and manages IACM workspaces, ensuring that the required infrastructure is in place before any resource provisioning begins. It also registers resources in IDP.
• The Provision Workspace pipeline plans and applies workflows (with built-in approvals).
• The Plan and Validate IACM Workspace pipeline verifies Terraform code.
• The Execute Drift Analysis pipeline identifies configuration drift from source code.
• The Teardown IACM Workspace pipeline removes workspaces (with built-in approvals).
• The Bulk Workspace Management pipeline allows for bulk operations against IACM workspaces.
• The Bulk Workspace IDP Registration pipeline allows for backwards compatibility from older version to bulk register resources into IDP.
• The Deploy HSF Factory Floor to Project pipeline initializes HSF Factory Floor in a new or existing project.
• The Rotate Harness Service Account Token and Secret pipeline rotates a Harness Service Account token and updates a Harness Secret with that value.

Workspaces Two IACM workspaces are created as part of the HSF framework:

• The Harness Pilot Light workspace manages and controls the core framework components.
• The Harness Solutions Factory workspace manages the “engine” layer of HSF, including the logic for requests made via IDP and the execution and provisioning of associated resources. This is the workspace that handles the practical implementation of self-service requests.

Repositories There are three repositories included in the deployment and exist under the organization level. You can find them under Harness Platform Management (organization) → Solutions Factory (account) → Code Repository (module) → Repositories:

• The harness-solutions-factory repository houses all of the source code that is required to standup and run Harness Solutions Factory. A code branch rule called harness_solutions_factory_codeowners is created in this repository.
• The harness-template-library repository houses all of the scaffold and templates for how to manage Harness resources. A code branch rule called harness_solutions_factory_codeowners is created in this repository.
• The harness-delegate-setup repository serves as an example of how to build a custom Harness Delegate and automate the addition of tools into the delegate.
• The custom-harness-template-library repository houses customized templates created to support Harness entity management and provisioning.