About Deployment Design

Deployment design begins with the deployment scenario created during the logical design and technical requirements phases of the solution life cycle. The deployment scenario contains a logical architecture and the quality of service requirements for the solution. You map the components identified in the logical architecture across physical servers and other network devices to create a deployment architecture. The quality of service requirements provide guidance on hardware configurations for performance, availability, scalability, and other related quality of service specifications.

Designing the deployment architecture is an iterative process. You typically revisit the quality of service requirements and reexamine your preliminary designs. You take into account the interrelationship of the quality of service requirements, balancing the trade-offs and cost of ownership issues to arrive at an optimal solution that ultimately satisfies the business goals of the project.

The best way to start deployment planning is to begin with a reference or building block architecture which is already well documented and tested. It is easier to modify this into what's required rather than starting from scratch. Factors that contribute to successful deployment design are past design experience, knowledge of systems architecture, domain knowledge, and applied creative thinking.

Deployment design typically revolves around achieving performance requirements while meeting other quality of service requirements. The strategies you use must balance the trade-offs of your design decisions to optimize the solution. The methodology you use typically involves the following tasks:

1. Estimate processor requirements. Deployment design often begins with portal sizing in the logical architecture. Start with the use cases and modify your estimates accordingly. Also consider any previous experience you have with designing enterprise systems.

2. Estimate processor requirements for secure transport. Study use cases that require secure transport and modify CPU estimates accordingly.

3. Replicate services for availability and scalability. Make modifications to the design to account for quality of service requirements for availability and scalability. Consider load balancing solutions that address availability and failover considerations.

4. During your analysis, consider the trade-offs of your design decisions. For example, what affect does the availability and scalability strategy have on serviceability (maintenance) of the system? What are the others costs of the strategies?

5. Identify bottlenecks. Examine the deployment design to identify any bottlenecks that cause the transmission of data to fall beneath requirements, and make adjustments.

6. Optimize resources. Review your deployment design for resource management and consider options that minimizes costs while fulfilling requirements.

7. Manage risks. Revisit your business and technical analysis, and modify your design to account for events or situations that your earlier planning did not foresee.