Overview of Deployment Designer
You can use Deployment Designer to create a deployment configuration of an application system that you can validate against a logical representation of the datacenter. When you define a deployment for a system, you bind the applications in that system to logical servers (application hosts) on a logical datacenter diagram. After binding applications to servers, you can then validate the requirements of the datacenter (expressed as settings and constraints) against the system requirements.
Validation is performed on a number of levels, including the following:
Ensuring that required communication pathways exist.
Determining whether the correct communication protocols are present and are compatible between applications and host servers.
This specific configuration of the application environment is also validated against the configuration requirements of the datacenter environment. All validation errors are displayed in the Visual Studio Error List window, which provides a simple navigation mechanism for correcting and reconciling errors. When you double-click an error in the Error List window, Deployment Designer opens the appropriate diagram, selects the appropriate application or logical server, and navigates to the appropriate setting so that you can correct it. This functionality makes it possible for you to correct configuration errors before deployment, even before the system is completely implemented. From Deployment Designer, you can generate a report of all the required application and datacenter configuration settings and used that report to create a script for custom deployment tools. For more information, see How to: Generate Deployment Reports and Error List Window.
The following illustrations show Deployment Designer and a deployment diagram.
Deployment Designer
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Deployment diagram
.gif "Deployment diagram")
For more information, see Deployment Designer Terminology.
See Also
Tasks
How to: Create Deployment Diagrams from Application Designer and System Designer