WebSphere Infrastructure Design

 

Deployment planning

Solution designs should always be a team effort involving lead architects, application architects and infrastructure architects. Following this model will greatly improve the chances of avoiding system design issues that typically manifest themselves in the late stages of deployment. Andrew is an expert infrastructure architect who will take on the responsibility of liaising between the other design architects and the various infrastructure divisions (network, hardware, operating system and security) to ensure that the design conforms to standards and security policies.

Infrastructure Architecture

Andrew will assist with the Business Analysis and Technical Requirements and take these outputs to produce the infrastructure architecture:

• Logical design -
• Deployment design
• Deployment implementation
• Operations

Logical design

The logical design identifies the software components needed to implement a solution, which together with the quality of service requirements, is used to create a logical architecture design and deployment scenario:

• Logical Architecture - identify the software components, their interrelationships and dependencies
• Logical tiers - organize the software components into logical tiers that represent their logical and physical independence (Client, Presentation, Business Service and Data tiers)
• Quality of service - performance, availability, security, scalability and serviceability

Deployment design

Andrew will create a deployment design that delivers a high level deployment architecture and a low level implementation specification (detailed design) using the deployment scenario created during the logical design phase. The following deliverables are typically produced:

• Deployment architecture - details the physical hardware and network requirements including server sizing and capacity planning
• Project costs and approval - the deployment architecture and other inputs are collated together to determine the cost of the project, which in turn is used to gain project approval
• Implementation specification - a detailed blueprint for building the solution, including computer hardware and network specifications, directory services, monitoring services and other components required for the solution
• Implementation plans - a set of plans for implementing the solution, including data migration plans (if applicable) and installation plans (naming conventions, directory structures, node specific software installation and configuration information necessary to install and configure the solution)
• User management plans - details migration strategies/re-use of existing user directories, directory design specifications and procedures for updating the user directories
• Test plan - detailed test procedures for prototype/pilot implementations including stress and functional tests
• Roll out plan - details the procedures and schedules for moving the solution into a production environment
• Disaster recovery plan - details the procedures to recover from catastrophic systems failures
• Operations plan - details the installation, upgrade, maintenance and monitoring procedures used by administrators in their daily operations
• Training plan - details the training requirements of the administrators, operators and end users for the newly installed solution

Validation of existing infrastructure solution designs

It is paramount to ensure that an infrastructure design solution is correct. Andrew will ratify existing infrastructure design solutions prior to implementation (and post implementation) and provide recommended changes to the design.