Working with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System (Pro-Developer)

Infrastructure Architect

Of the two architect types that Team System identifies, I'll begin with the infrastructure architect, who designs and documents the datacenter and network infrastructure. This architect understands and models the application's logical datacenter, including its hardware, communication types, pathways, firewalls, and security constraints. Although not directly related to the software development effort, these models are critical to the success of an application because the application must be validated against these constraints to prove that it can be deployed to that environment. This concept is known as Design for Deployment.

The infrastructure architect, in conjunction with IT operations, will use the Logical Datacenter Designer in Team System to model the environment. Before using this tool, the infrastructure architect should have an understanding of the datacenter environment, including some of the following key points:

• The types of application Hosts (Web server, database server, and generic) in the datacenter

• The versions of operating systems and .NET on each server

• The firewalls or communication flow restrictions between the servers (HTTP, TDS, or generic)

• The protocols allowed into and out of each server and Zone

• Any other constraints for each server and Zone (including custom constraints)

NOTE

The infrastructure architect role might be known by other names in your company: network architect, technical architect, network security architect, enterprise architect, information system architect, operations analyst, or systems architect.