The Application-2-Infrastructure Mapping for an application is the information about the network, compute and storage used for the application system deployment. Application-2-Infrastructure Mapping is mission critical for system deployment life cycle. In most organizations, the Application-2-Infrastructure information is not easily available and often it is tribal knowledge. There are tools in the market claims to auto-discover and create the mapping for you. The reality is that there is no tool in the market that can auto-discover and create Application-2-Infrastructure Mapping for an enterprise applications portfolio. The first iteration of creating Application-2-Infrastructure Mapping is manual in nature. The Mapping tools such as BMC ADDM and HP ADDM will auto-discover the infrastructure elements also known as application elements but application owner needs to define the mapping rules. The tools have a library of these rules for some of the popular applications technology stack that doesn't cover 100% of an enterprise application portfolio. The standard library often misses covering the custom implementations for a popular applications technology stack.

Sample Schema Elements for Application-2-Infrastructure Mapping:

• application Name
• application Description
• application environment/landscape(s)
• application serviceUrl(s)
• serviceUrls DNS / GTM / GSLB / L7LB Configuration
• application VIPs / LTM / LSLB / L4LB Configuration
• application Network Information
  • Internet / WAN
  • Zones / vLANs / ServerGroups
  • networkfirewallRules
• misc access and security controls
• web server(s)
• application server(s)
• database server(s)
• misc servers such as batch, messaging queue etc
• data replication methods and tools
• server(s) storage LUNs mappings
• server(s) NAS mappings
• server(s) technology stack
• server(s) Operating System Processes
• application dependencies - common/core services
• application dependencies - enterprise applications services
• application dependencies - external applications services

Disclaimer

The thoughts expressed in the blog are those of the author and do not represent necessarily the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the study are not reflective of the point of view(s) of any entity other than the author. Since we are critically thinking human beings, the point of view(s) is always subject to change, revision and rethinking at any time. While reasonable efforts have been made to obtain accurate information, the author makes no warranty, expressed or implied as to its accuracy.