How to Create an IT Infrastructure Blueprint?

This page introduces the basic steps to create an IT Infrastructure Blueprint on Dragon1.

What is an IT Infrastructure Blueprint?#

An IT Infrastructure Blueprint is a detailed architecture drawing, mainly at conceptual and logical level, showing the capabilities, concepts, and principles, structure and workings of the IT Infrastructure in an organization.

In more detail, an IT Infrastructure blueprint is a visualization of the standards, types, versions and vendors of accepted, implemented and available IT Assets of an organization, i.e. the set of computer software and hardware plus 'connected' things; arranged in a specific configuration that serves as the current or future IT Infrastructure to support the business operation of an organization, preferably in an optimal way.

An IT Infrastructure Blueprint presents a technical view of IT rather than a functional view. Sometimes the key information systems and most important applications of the organization are put on the blueprint. But that is not always the case.

Dragon1 supports you to add management views that provide extra information. Examples are: incidents view, conflicts view, business continuity view, compliance view, migration view, impact of change view and maturity view.

Only 1 out of 100 architects create blueprints that board members and directors use.

The benefits of creating an Architecture Blueprint for your IT Infrastructure is that you provide CTOs, managers and projects with opportunities to analyze strengths and weaknesses, improve alignment, reuse and standardization, mature capabilities, save costs, mitigate risks, reduce complexity, and increase the availability of services and the agility of their IT-infrastructure and it's architecture.

Three things are maybe holding you back from creating an IT Infrastructure blueprint like this (in PowerPoint or Visio):

• You lack the right data. It is not available, incomplete or inconsisnte
• You think you do not have the correct visualization skills needed
• The time it takes to create the blueprint is much too long. The blueprint is needed YESTERDAY, of course.
• Once it's created, the time to update the blueprint takes too long.

On Dragon1, we remove all these objections to create a blueprint.

- First of all, you save much time using the Visual Designer web application templates.
- Secondly, you can use the Dragon1 reference model without having your own data.
- Thirdly, Dragon1 provides various features, making drawing effective and nice-looking visualizations easier.

If you print out the Dragon1 reference model at A0 size and put it on the wall of your manager or CxO, they will immediately want the real version, and priority is put on providing you with the data needed.

Supported Frameworks and Iconsets#

Dragon1 supports users to create IT Infrastructure Blueprints using classic, IBM, Azure and AWS icons, and other iconsets.

Network, Storage and Computing Components#

The IT Infrastructure Blueprint template is a framework for informing and educating stakeholders, developing innovative IT environments, or documenting current and future state IT Infrastructures.

The template adresses the three pillars or primary components of any IT Infrastructure: 1) Network, 2) Storage, and 3) Computing.

This Dragon1 blueprint template for IT Infrastructure is the perfect solution to help you understand and communicate about your computer networks much better. This is an unambiguous and structured way.

On the Dragon1 Platform, the IT Infrastructure Blueprint is available as a template and accessible in the Viewer and the Visual Designer.

This is an example of a classic IT Infrastructure Blueprint in the Dragon1 Viewer.

IT Infrastructure Overview#

The term IT infrastructure is defined by the Dragon1 architecture method as a coherent set of hardware, software, networks, storage, and computing facilities (including all of the information technology-related equipment) used to develop, test, deliver, monitor, control, or support IT services. Associated people, processes, and documentation are very relevant but are not considered to be part of IT Infrastructure.

Most IT Infrastructures are constructed with the following eight types of components:

• Network Switch - A device that physically connects devices
• Router - A device that routes packets between devices, from IP to address to IP address
• Firewall - A security device at the end of a network
• Server - A network computer with many resources. There are many standard types of servers: database server, application, server, directory, web server and file server
• Physical Plant - This is all the network cabling of your IT Infrastructure. Note: This is always a fragile link in terms of security
• People - Strictly speaking, people are not part of the IT infrastructure, but they are vital in maintaining it
• Data Center (Server Room) - The location where the servers are placed, secured and protected
• Infrastructure Software - An IT environment cannot run without driver software, computer BIOS software, operating system software, and directory service software
• Domains - An IT infrastructure is normally made less complex by dividing it into functional groups. Common groups are Develop, Test, Production, Archive, Storage, Business, Consumer, and Cloud (these domains are visible on the Dragon1 IT Infrastructure Canvas

A cloud can be seen as a scalable IT infrastructure accessed via the Internet.

How To View an IT Infrastructure Blueprint#

To view an IT Infrastructure Blueprint:

• Go to the Viewer
• Click on the IT Infrastructure Canvas
• Now you see an interactive/clickable IT Infrastructure Blueprint
• NOTE I: If you are logged in, you need to select "show demos" in the Viewer to see the ITIL template
• Click on a shape in the diagram to see the details of the item you clicked on at the left.
• NOTE II: You can use three different types of sources for your data: the Dragon1 repository, Excel Sheets, and restAPIs / JSON file / XML Files.

Download and view the Excel File, XML file or JSON file#

Dragon1 offers you to work file-based (Excel File, XML file or JSON structured) and repository-based (in a SQL Server database management system).

The example above has the data in a .dragon1 file. A .dragon1 file is JSON structured on the inside.

To download and view this ITIL template file:

• Click on this link to download the it-infrastructure-canvas.dragon1 file containing the IT Infrastructure data.
• You can open and edit the file in any text editor, like Notepad
• To view your edits, go to the Viewer
• Click on the Upload button at the right top
• Select your file in the dialog
• Now you see your IT Infrastructure in the ITIL template
• NOTE: You need to be logged in to be able to save changes in a .dragon1 file or the repository.

IT Infrastructure Shapes#

Dragon1 supports IT modeling at a conceptual, logical, and physical level. Below, you see the most commonly used shapes:

Object	Shape	Description
Domain / Architecture Area		An abstract object for grouping other objects.
Site		A physical location.
Organization Unit		A group, department, function, or other collection of people or organization units
Actor		A person, an individual.
Role		A set of responsibilities
Network		Any kind of connected computers.
Software Server		A commercial software environment
Hardware Server		A high availability resource machine
Firewall		A server protecting the network
Workstation		A client machine
Mobile Device		A handheld client
Network Node		Can represent various kinds of network components
Deployment Instance		An instance of an object defined elsewhere
Infrastructure Link		A link between elements in a technology layer diagram

How To Create an IT Infrastructure Blueprint on Dragon1?#

You can create a blueprint on the fly, directly in the Viewer, in the Data Dashboard, or in the Visual Designer.

An IT Infrastructure Blueprint template in the Visual Designer

We will first describe the Viewer way.

To create an IT Infrastructure Blueprint:

• Go to the Viewer
• Click the Edit button (in the button bar below).
• Click the Atlas icon (in the button bar above).
• Select the basic atlas template.
• Click on a page.
• Select the IT Infrastructure Blueprint template.
• Click on the Clipart menu item (at the right top of the shapes toolbar).
• Now you can drag shapes onto the canvas (they will be instantiated as data in the repository or file.
• Click on a shape; on the left side, click on the shape's name. Now, you can edit the name.
• Press TAB to update the name in the visualization.
• Or click on the Properties icon in the top button bar to edit the selected shape's properties.
• To delete a shape: click on a shape in the diagram and click on the cross in the smart tools menu with the shape.
• You can drag any shape to the IT Infrastructure, like the clipart shapes, to make it more appealing for the Viewer.
• NOTE: You must be logged in to save changes in an Excel File, XML File or JSON/.dragon1 file or the repository.

If you want to be guided by a chatbot in the viewer in creating an IT Infrastructure Blueprint, click the Chatbot button.

Create an IT Infrastructure via the Data Manager (Repository)#

To create an IT Infrastructure blueprint via the Data Manager:

• Log in.
• Go to the Data Manager via the left menu.
• Follow the instructions to create an atlas
• Follow the instructions to create an atlas page. Link the atlas page to the atlas.
• Follow the instructions to create a visualization and select the IT Infrastructure Blueprint Template. Link the visualization to the atlas page.
• Follow the instructions to add IT-infrastructure items, like servers, firewalls, routers and devices in the repository.
• Follow the instructions to create a model by creating relationships between the IT-infrastructure items.
• Link the model to the visualization
• Go to the Viewer
• Select the created atlas
• View your IT Infrastructure Blueprint.

How to manage your IT Infrastructure Blueprint?#

Read the following use cases and best practices on how to manage with this diagram:

• Documenting IT infrastructure - report with diagrams that are [not] documented yet.
• IT Cost Reduction - visualize where and how you can save the budget (f.i. with deduplication or replacing legacy.
• Risk Mitigation - visualize where your risk is and how to reduce it.
• Standardization - visualize what is [not] standardized and the impact of standardization.
• Improving Security - visualize how secure your IT environment is and how to make it more secure.

How To Create an Infrastructure Architecture#

To create a blueprint like the one in the screenshot, follow the plan. The plan has six stages: Collect data, create a model, create a view, create a visualization, publish the visualization, and process feedback. By doing these six steps iteratively, you will, on short notice, have a blueprint everyone will like, and executives use that to make decisions.

To create an IT Infrastructure Blueprint:

• Setup Dossier and Folder Structure
  • Go to the Setup Dossier Structure page and read how to create a dossier and folder structure.
  • Create four folders in a dossier called Data: models, views, visual items, and visualizations;
  • In these folders, we will store the data, models, views, and visualizations we will create.
• Collect Data
  • Collect data from the official sources (databases and people) and put everything in an Excel sheet.
  • Go to the Import Data page and read how to import data.
  • Go to the Enter Data page and read how to enter data.
  • Upload the Excel sheet to get the data in the tool.
  • The data you need to collect is strategy data (stakeholders, goals, and requirements for the IT Infrastructure), architecture data (the concepts, elements, and components of the IT Infrastructure), and transformation data (roadmaps, programs, projects, and deliverables) to implement to need changes of the IT Architectural Infrastructure.
• Create a Model
  • Go to the Create Model page and read what a model is and how to create a model.
  • Now create one enterprise model with all the data connected to it.
  • Or create per type of data a different stakeholders model, networks model, servers model, etc...
• Create a View
  • Go to the Create View page and read what a view is and how to create a view.
  • Now create a view that filters out all the data from your model(s) that you do not want to have shown on the visualization.
  • You can, of course, create various views to present via various interconnected visualizations.
• Create a Visualization
  • We have a view of a model of data in place. We can now create a graphical representation of the view aligned with how the stakeholder, to whom it may concern, would like to see it visualized.
  • Go to the Create Visualization page and read how to create a visualization
  • Create a visualization canvas in the Visual Designer
  • Insert a View Layout on the canvas
  • Insert Visual Items on the canvas
  • Connect the Visual Items with the view(s) you created
  • Save your visualization often enough
  • Switch to normal mode to see what the blueprint will look like once published.
• Publish the Visualization
  • Go to the Publish Visualization page and read how to publish a visualization to the Viewer so that it can be viewed on an iPad (Tablet PC)
  • Select your visualization. Click on the Share button
  • Enter the correct information and press OK
  • Go to the Viewer and look at your visualization
  • Mail the link to the stakeholder and ask them to view the blueprint and comment on it.
• Process Feedback
  • Read the Process Comments and Feedback page
  • Stakeholders can leave comments behind on the visualizations you created and published to the Viewer.
  • Check regularly if comments are placed or enable and tune the notification (speed) you get when people add comments to your visualizations.
  • You can delete comments and change the visualization, view, model, or data.
  • Automatically, everyone who subscribed to the channel the visualization was placed in is notified of the update.
  • In the Viewer, they can see who has made the update and what the update was.

This concludes the plan to create an IT Infrastructure Architecture Blueprint on Dragon1. If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments for us, please feel to mail them to servicedesk@dragon1.com.

Dragon1 PRO Edition#

The Dragon1 PRO edition provides you with all the features needed to create the blueprint that is discussed here. Including support or training in using the Dragon1 software to create the blueprint. We even have the service of creating the blueprint for you. For more information, call us at +31 (0)317 411 341 or sales@dragon1.com.

A Tutorial on an IT Infrastructure Landscape#

Here on Dragon1 you can, with one click of a button, create an IT Infrastructure Landscape diagram. Next, adjust the template to your situation. You can create building blocks for your IT Infrastructure and build up your IT Infrastructure diagram with it.