Logical Datacenter Designer Terminology

In Distributed System Designers, you can use Logical Datacenter Designer to abstract and represent part of a physical datacenter using logical servers, endpoints, connections, and zones. From the Toolbox, you can drag prototypes to the logical datacenter diagram to define logical servers, zones, and endpoints. You can then connect logical servers and zones through their endpoints. For more information, see Overview of Logical Datacenter Designer.

The following illustrations show Logical Datacenter Designer and a logical datacenter diagram.

Logical Datacenter Designer

Logical datacenter diagram

The following table introduces terminology associated with Logical Datacenter Designer.

Term	Definition
Logical datacenter diagram	The diagram used to create a logical representation of a datacenter. The logical datacenter diagram (.ldd) file contains information based on the System Definition Model (SDM). For more information, see the following topics: Overview of the System Definition Model (SDM) Relationships Between System Definition Model (SDM) Documents
Logical datacenter	Represents and abstracts part of a physical datacenter using logical servers, endpoints, connections, and zones.
Logical server	Represents the run-time environment to which an application will deploy. You can also constrain the types of applications that a logical server can host when deployment is defined for a system. You can also apply settings to a logical server as well as configure constraints. For more information, see Overview of Logical Servers on Logical Datacenter Diagrams.
Logical server endpoint	Represents a connection point for a logical server and is of client or server type. In addition, on logical server endpoints, you can constrain the types of application endpoints that can bind to a logical server endpoint when deployment is defined for a system. You can also apply settings to a logical server endpoint as well as configure constraints. For more information, see Overview of Endpoints on Zones and Logical Servers.
Zone	Represents a logical partition or communication boundary within a datacenter on a logical datacenter diagram. However, a zone can represent any type of boundary, for example, trust boundaries. You can constrain the types of logical servers that the zone can contain. Zones and the logical servers that they contain are subject to communication constraints that are specified on zone endpoints. For more information, see Overview of Zones on Logical Datacenter Diagrams.
Zone endpoint	Represents a connection and communication endpoint for a zone and is inbound, outbound, or bidirectional type. A zone endpoint delegates communication to endpoints on logical servers within the zone. You can apply restrictions on communication between logical servers inside and outside a zone. You can also apply settings to a zone endpoint as well as configure constraints. For more information, see Overview of Endpoints on Zones and Logical Servers.
Connection	Represents how logical servers connect to each other in the datacenter. For more information, see Communication with Zones and Logical Servers.
Delegation	Represents the delegation of communication between a zone endpoint and a logical server endpoint. For more information, see Communication with Zones and Logical Servers.
Logical server prototype	A preconfigured logical server in the Toolbox that you can use to define logical servers on the logical datacenter diagram. For example, you can drag the IISWebServer prototype from the Toolbox to define an Internet Information Server that can host ASP.NET applications. You can also create custom prototypes. For more information, see the following topics: Logical Server Prototypes in Logical Datacenter Designer How to: Create Custom Prototypes from Configured Zones and Logical Servers

See Also

Concepts

Overview of Distributed System Designers

Workflow Across Distributed System Designers

Distributed System Designers Terminology Overview

Reference

Settings and Constraints Editor Terminology