How to: Validate a Deployment Diagram

After you create a deployment diagram and bind applications within the system to logical servers in the datacenter, you can validate the deployment diagram to find constraint violations between the applications and logical servers.

To validate a deployment diagram

  • In Deployment Designer, choose Validate Diagram from the Diagram menu.

The Distributed System Designers validate the settings and constraints specified in the .sdm file(s) for the system against those specified in the .sdm file for the target datacenter modeled in the logical datacenter diagram. Any validation errors that occur appear in the Error List.

Several types of validation are performed. First, a check is made to see whether communication pathways required by applications are available in the defined deployment configuration. For example, if a Web service application is connected to a database application in a system, then the Web service must be bound to a Web server that is able to communicate with a database server hosting the database.

Next, constraints specified for the applications within a system and those specified for the logical datacenter are checked against the corresponding settings on the opposing layer. For example, if the ASP.NET Session State constraint on an IIS Web Server is set to require In-Proc session state, but the session state for the application bound to the server is set to SQL Server, a constraint validation error occurs.

For examples of both of these types of errors, see Walkthrough: Validating an Application System for Deployment. For more information about how to fix validation errors, see How to: Resolve Validation Warnings on Deployment Diagrams.

Use the following procedure to clear validation errors from the Error List. This action does not revalidate the diagram.

To clear validation errors

  • In Deployment Designer, choose Clear Validation Messages from the Diagram menu.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Resolve Validation Warnings on Deployment Diagrams