So what have I been up to that I don't have time for blogging? Well, just what I said I'd be doing, migrating hundreds of applications to new infrastructure.
Being Enterprise Architect for a large distributed division and, for a time, their application infrastructure architect keeps me hopping, especially since I'm still the only .NET/Windows architect. While certainly a great resume stuffer, I find the task switching tasking. As I read in one architect book: perception is not reality: it's gotta work in the end. I won't blather about particulars, but suffice it to say that I feel like I'm propping up several ends of the table; not an easy feat.
One idea I've been pushing for some time is establishing an on-line application profile for every application that goes into the new architecture. Ideas were being thrown around about large Word documents and Authoritative Visio documents. As we all know, paper, even electronic paper, is obsolete when the ink dries.
Since our company has standardized on the Rational Suite, I've focused on pushing Clear Quest as the Application Profile repository. At some point I'd like to push data into it from VSTS.
At some point I'd like it to go from soup to nuts; that is, from hardware infrastructure to standards compliance. There's several roles, the app dev team, the infrastructure team (in our case, from a separate company), and architecture and security teams, to name a few. You can even through project sponsor sign offs, but I think that's pushing it for a Clear Quest interface. One can build a rather elaborate work-flow, to boot.
How's it work? Consider this flow:
- The app dev team specifies all the computers (or slices there of) that they need and the utilization, storage, communications volume that each connection needs.
- The infrastructure team procures the hardware and prepares the pipes, etc.
- The app dev team specifies the OS options and standard software platform options they require (...a helping of IIS6, a heap of COM+, a dash of BizTalk 2004, a pinch of SQL Server 2000, a tad of Crystal 11...)
- The infrastructure team builds out the dev/test boxes.
- The app dev team starts building the application.
- The app dev team completes an on-line standards compliance survey.
- The application portfolio and security teams review the survey and approve/deny variances.
- The app dev team submits the application for production.
There's more, but you get the idea. Some of the neat things about having a detailed application profile database are
- The ability to slice the application profile in several directions for analysis
- The ability to build a broad security profile from the surveys
- The ability to “tune” security compliance by reviewing past variances.
- The ability to auto-generate accurate deployment and network diagrams
- The ability to map out the use of an entire data center against the applications that use it.
- The ability to automatically contrast the stated bandwidth requirements against reality and look for ways to economize.
- And more!
We'll see how successful I am and when.