Chapter 3: Logical Infrastructure Modeling Using Logical Datacenter Designer

Overview

In this chapter, we'll look at Logical Datacenter Designer, the distributed system designer that you can use to define the logical servers, protected zones, and communication pathways of the target deployment environment, along with the meta-data and configuration requirements of that deployment environment.

The logical datacenter may be devised independently of the applications that will be deployed to it, with a diagrammatic representation of the deployment environment—the logical datacenter diagram—being delivered to the applications team so that they have a view of that environment before being exposed to the deployment environment itself. In addition, that need not be limited to a single target deployment environment because Logical Datacenter Designer enables you to create several diagrams representing alternative deployment infrastructures.

The important link between Application Designer (discussed in the previous chapter) and Logical Datacenter Designer (this chapter) will be described in the next chapter, where we'll show how applications grouped into systems may be mapped to, and validated against, the logical servers of a datacenter using System Designer and Deployment Designer. That's an important concept, one we know as design for deployment.

In this chapter, we'll first give you an overview of the Logical Datacenter Designer toolbox and the prototypes it provides. Then we'll give you a couple of examples: first a simple diagram based on a real .NET deployment infrastructure, and then the logical datacenter for the StockBroker applications. We'll close with a discussion of how you can gain fine-grained control of the deployment environment characteristics via the Settings and Constraints Editor.

To work through this chapter, you need to be familiar with the design of the StockBroker running example introduced in Chapter 2, but you need not have implemented it.