Introduction

The Logical Resource Manager is a visual workspace that supports the creation and manipulation of logical solution designs.

This capability allows system designers and architects to develop solution designs quickly that describe various types of logical resource item types.

This can include items relevant for virtualisation across the storage, network and compute domains, or at higher layers of logical abstraction such as within the application, service and microservice domains.

The following screenshot shows an ArenaCore design session in which a set of logical resources are being edited (logical resources can be application modules, services, VMs, containers, storage volumes, network elements, etc):

The items seen in the diagram above are some example instances of various classes of logical resource product definitions. For example, product definitions may represent popular ICT or cloud type offerings, and/or customised infrastructure and service elements that have been developed on an internal basis within your own (or another) organisation. Commonly used commercial / open source elements may be freely associated with internally developed items providing that any associated compatibility rules are satisfied.

Within the ArenaCore design canvas environment, the product configuration UI forms, business logic and configuration attributes supported on any type of logical product definition can be created and customised by ArenaCore users!

The example screen below shows the result of a user double-clicking a ‘Gateway’ node in the previously shown diagram. As a result, a popup dialog panel has appeared above the design canvas surface (in addition to details that appear on the left hand side even for a single click selection).

Note that product specific attributes presented in these screen regions and how they function is not managed by ArenaCore itself:

The power of the ArenaCore product definition approach is that you as the developer of the product definition are in control of the UI and business logic elements that determine what attributes are presented, collected and processed during design activities!

The flexible product management featureset of ArenaCore supports ongoing creation and refinement of additional new logical items types as they gain popularity in the industry.

It is possible to incorporate logical elements from multiple suppliers, using a drag and drop approach to item selection and placement, provided that role level compatibility of those items match.

It is worth noting quickly that elements that are often called ‘services’ by many people, are actually logical resources! This is because they will usually describe a technology endpoint or interface that provides a capability, and must usually consume capacity and performance from any supporting physical and logical resource layers.

In the context of ArenaCore, a ‘service’ is better thought of as being a contract – such as the broadband internet service you may be paying for at your home. This is actually a contract, and is supported by numerous logical and physical resource elements with the result being that you are assured of having an agreed level of performance and availability for access to the Internet.

Built in workflow processes support the review and approval of solution designs. Once approved, new and modified logical structures can be updated into downstream operations platforms – effectively linking the design and operations phases of the systems engineering lifecycle.

This document describes how to access and use the Logical Resource Manager, and how it relates to broader ArenaCore platform management concepts.