Getting started with Cloud Assembly designs

You use the design page to create Cloud Assembly template specifications for the machines and applications that you want to provision.

How to use the design page

To create a cloud template from scratch, go to Design > Cloud Templates. Then, click New from > Blank canvas.

1. Locate resources.
2. Drag resources to the canvas.
3. Connect resources.
4. Configure resources by editing the cloud template code.

Selecting and adding resources to the canvas

Resources appear at the left of the design page for selecting and dragging.

Cloud agnostic resources	You can deploy cloud agnostic resources to any cloud vendor. At provisioning time, the deployment uses cloud specific resources that match. For example, if you expect a cloud template to deploy to both AWS and vSphere cloud zones, use cloud agnostic resources.
Cloud vendor resources	Vendor resources, such as those specific to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or VMware vSphere, can only be deployed to matching AWS, Azure, GCP, or vSphere cloud zones. You can add cloud agnostic resources to a cloud template that contains cloud specific resources for a particular vendor. Just be aware of what the project cloud zones support in terms of vendor.
Configuration management resources	Configuration management resources depend on your integrated applications. For example, a Puppet resource can monitor and enforce the configuration of the other resources.

Connecting resources

Use the Cloud Assembly design canvas graphical controls to connect resources.

Resources must be compatible for a connection. For example:

• Connecting a load balancer to a cluster of machines.
• Connecting a machine to a network.
• Connecting external storage to a machine.

Important:

A solid line connector requires that the two resources be deployed in the same cloud zone. If you add conflicting constraints to the resources, deployment might fail.

For example, you can't deploy connected resources where constraint tags force the placement of one to a zone in us-west-1, and the other to a zone in us-east-1.

Solid or dashed arrows only indicate a dependency, not a connection. For more about dependencies, see Creating bindings and dependencies between resources in Cloud Assembly.

To connect, hover over the edge of a resource to reveal the connection bubble. Then, click and drag the bubble to the target resource and release.

In the code editor, additional code for the source resource appears in the target resource code.

In the figure, the SQL machine and private network are connected, so they must be deployed in the same cloud zone.

Editing cloud template code

The code editor allows you to type, cut, copy, and paste code directly. If you're uncomfortable editing code, you can click a resource that's already in the design canvas, click the code editor Properties tab, and enter values there. Property values that you enter appear in the code as if you had typed them directly.

Note that you can copy and paste code from one cloud template to another.