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(EA)2 User's Guide
Sites and Network Topologies
Sites represent locations where you have hardware and software deployed. They are used as tagged values for IT Hardware elements, i.e. Servers, to show where they are deployed.
Sites

A Site is created by dragging the SIte tool from the (EA)<sup>2</sup> Infrastructure Architecture Toolbox onto the Site diagram under the Infrastructure Architecture View | Sites package.

Sites

The Site element is automatically created as a composite element with an EA2 Infrastructure Architecture child diagram. This diagram can be used to draw a network topology diagram for the Site. Of course, you can create several diagrams depending on the extent of the topology.

Network Topologies

Network topologies show the network nodes, e.g. Servers, Serverframes, Mainframes, Firewalls, Load Balancers, etc, and how they are wired together on your network. The following diagram shows an example of a network topology diagram. It uses alternate images for each of the network nodes.

SiteNetworkTopology

Each of the element on the diagram were previously created in their proper locations. You will notice that there are no elements under the Paris site in the Project Browser.

Existing IP addresses of the nodes can be discovered by right clicking on a node and then selecting Embedded Elements | Embedded Elements.. from the context menu. The IP addresses are represented as UML ports on the node. If the appropriate IP address is not there, drag the IP toolbox element from the (EA)<sup>2</sup> Infrastructure Architecture Toolbox onto the node and give it the IP address.

Once you have set up your nodes, you can connect them via Quicklinks. When you drag the quicklink arrow from one port to another, you will get the follow types of network segments to tag the connector:

  • Internet
  • Intranet
  • Extranet
  • DMZ
  • Untyped

You can use the last item if you do not care about capturing this level of detail. If the diagram is rather busy and you simply do not want to show the connector's stereotype, right click on the stereotype label and select Hide Label. To show the stereotype again, click on the connector and select Visibility | Set Label Visibility... and check the Middle Bottom Label.

 

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