Deployment Definitions Created from Application and System Diagrams
When defining applications in Application Designer, you can discover configuration, connection, and validation issues early in the application design process by defining and validating deployment definitions from the application diagram. When designing an application system in System Designer, you define and validate deployment definitions from the system diagram. These validation results might provide valuable feedback about issues that might not be discovered until deployment, and therefore might prevent costly changes at a later time.
In both scenarios, you use Deployment Designer to describe how applications deploy to a target logical datacenter. However, the difference is that defining and validating deployment from the application diagram instead of the system diagram employs an automatically-designed "default" system instead of a manually-designed system. In addition, the application diagram represents how applications are configured and connected in the development environment, while system diagrams represent how to applications are configured and connected when deploying an instance of the defined system. In all other aspects, the process of defining and validating deployment definitions is the same for a default system as for a manually-designed system.
Note
Finalizing a deployment definition from deployment diagrams or deployment reports generated from default systems is not recommended. Default systems are useful for quickly evaluating individual applications within the datacenter, but should not be used for final deployment. No system diagram (.sd) files are generated for default systems. Therefore, except for the information included in the deployment report, no record of the default system actually exists, for example, to check into source code control. It is recommended that you use deployment diagrams created using default systems to quickly evaluate applications for configuration and connection issues. You should then use System Designer to create your system designs and use these instead to create deployment diagrams and the corresponding deployment reports.
For more information, see the following topics:
Defining Deployment from Application or System Diagrams
Typically, you use System Designer to manually design an application system that describes specific configurations of applications or other systems. You then define and validate deployment definitions for those systems. However, you also need to update those systems manually when making certain changes to the application diagram. However, when you define and validate deployment definitions from the application diagram, Application Designer creates a default system to use for validation. This default system automatically includes all applications as they are configured and connected on the application diagram. You cannot view or modify this default system except by changing the application diagram, which updates the default system automatically. Therefore, you can validate applications without manually designing and maintaining a system.
When you begin the process of defining deployment for automatically and manually- designed systems, you must choose a logical datacenter diagram that represents the target datacenter to which you want to deploy. You can use Logical Datacenter Designer to create a logical datacenter diagram if needed. For more information, see How to: Create Logical Datacenter Diagrams.
Note
A logical datacenter diagram abstracts part of the physical datacenter using logical servers, connections, and zones. Logical servers, such as Web, Windows, and database servers, instead of physical servers represent each run-time environment. Though connections between logical servers might be within the same physical server at deployment; the diagram shows all connections. Zones logically represent physical or logical boundaries such as routers or firewalls in the datacenter. For more information, see Representing Datacenters with Logical Datacenter Designer.
From the chosen logical datacenter diagram, Deployment Designer creates a deployment diagram. A deployment diagram mirrors the layout of the logical datacenter diagram but its purpose is to describe how to deploy applications in a particular system to a particular run-time environment. On the deployment diagram, you can specify the logical servers that will host applications in the system by binding applications to those logical servers. For more information, see Binding Applications to Logical Servers.
After you finish binding applications, you can validate the deployment diagram to compare constraints set on applications with those set on logical servers and discover configuration or connection issues that might exist. After validation, you can generate a deployment report to document these issues and to create scripts for deployment to physical servers. For more information, see Validating Deployment Diagrams and Creating Deployment Reports.
See Also
Concepts
Overview of Application Designer
Overview of System Designer
Overview of Deployment Designer
Workflow Across Distributed System Designers