Software and infrastructure visualization

Drag and select modes

Toggles the mode in which the visualization can be displayed.

In both docked (maximized) and floating (minimized) views, use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out, and drag on the background to move around. On a touch device, pinch to zoom. Double-click inside the view to recenter and zoom the display to fit the window.

Drag the background to move the whole diagram. Drag individual icons to rearrange the view.

Dragging individual icons to rearrange the view is not supported in Internet Explorer version 10.

• Click a node to select it alone. Previously selected nodes are deselected.
• Shift-click a node to add it to previously selected nodes.
• Control-click a node to deselect an icon where multiple icons are selected.
• Click the background and drag around nodes to lasso-select a group of nodes.
• Hold Shift while dragging the background to add to the current selection with a lasso-select.
• Hold Control while dragging the background to remove from the current selection with a lasso-select.

Enables you to change between the Visualize - Software - Connected,  Visualize - Software, and the Visualize - Infrastructure views. You can also change between the views using the drop-down selector in the header bar of the software context popup view. In each view, the node that represents the object you are looking at is highlighted. Click a node to view the object page of that node.

The Visualize - Software - Connected view is the only view from which you can begin application modeling. When you are modeling an application, the Focus control is disabled to ensure you remain in the Visualize - Software - Connected view.

The Visualize - Software - Connected view focuses on software and communication between items of software and shows some details of the hosts and load balancers involved.

Software

In the Visualize - Software view, the node that represents the object you are looking at is highlighted. The Visualize - Software view focuses on software and communication between items of software running on a host, and is particularly useful for understanding what is running on a host.

In the Visualize - Infrastructure view, the node that represents the object you are looking at is highlighted. The Visualize - Infrastructure view focuses on the connectivity to network and storage components. It shows the switches a host is connected to, underlying storage for host filesystems, VMs on VM servers, or if the given host is a VM, the server on which it is hosted.

Displays the ways in which the object nodes can be arranged. Once a layout has been calculated, you can further manipulate the view by dragging nodes, and by expanding and collapsing collections. Choosing the same layout again recalculates the layout, and can lead to a clearer view.

The following options are available under Layout:

Provides options for viewing information node membership of manual groups and model definitions. Click the Groups icon next to the help icon in the top right to see a key to reconcile labels, indicators and groups.

Relationship routing

Choose the node kinds to show. Select the node kinds to show or hide from the list of node kinds shown in the model. Depending on the application that you are modeling, you may see the structure more clearly by hiding certain nodes such as hosts.

You can export or print the current view for review at any stage. The images are produced without the associated tools and menus.

When you have saved the model you can export it as a model definition

Print Visualization

To print an image of the current view, click Print Visualization and select a paper size from the drop-down list. The browser print dialog is displayed. You must choose the same paper size in the print dialog.

Export as SVG

To export a PNG image of the current view, click Export and choose PNG.

When you have saved the model, you can also export a model definition. Exported model definitions can be imported using the Model > Applications page.

Provides a list of removed nodes and a list of unsaved removal rules. A count of removed nodes and unsaved removal rules is shown on the Removed Nodes icon.

• Removed Nodes: Removed nodes are grouped by time of removal or node kind. Choose the most useful grouping using the Time/Kind selector. Once a model has been saved, not all nodes that have been removed are displayed here. For example, if a group of nodes are connected to the main visualization by one "joining point", it is only those nodes acting as "joining points" that are listed.
  
  • You can restore any of the removed node groups to the view by clicking the Restore button against that node grouping.
  • You can expand any of the removed node groups by clicking the + icon preceding the group name.
  • You can restore any of the individual removed nodes to the view by clicking the Restore button against that node.
• Removal Rules: Unsaved removal rules are grouped by rule type. You can cancel removal rule creation by clicking the undo arrow next to the rule. To save all unsaved removal rules, click Save Rules at the top right of the visualization. If you save the removal rules, they are applied to all visualizations on the appliance.

Opens the current view in the application modeling editor. You can choose to:

• Start a new model.
• Add to an existing model.

This option is only enabled in the Visualize - Software view.

Undo/Redo

Enables you to undo or redo recent operations. Where no operation can be undone, the undo icon is disabled. Where no operation can be redone, the redo icon is disabled.

When you save removal rules, the Undo/Redo queue is cleared.

Key

Click + to zoom in and - to zoom out. Or drag the slider up or down respectively.

The mouse scroll-wheel can be used to zoom in and out.

Stop layout updates

Prevents any further layout updates. Sometimes with a large or complex model, the layout may take a long time to stabilize. Select this option to stop the updates.

Select all

Selects all nodes in the view.

Clear selection

Deselects all selected nodes.

Invert selection

Inverts the current selection. Nodes previously not selected are selected, and the reverse.

Keep only selected

Keep the selected nodes and remove all nodes that are not selected.

Remove selected

Remove the selected nodes.

Undo action

For example, Undo extend model.If you have performed an action, undo it and return to the previous state. You can also use the Undo arrow at the top right of the visualization, or via the keyboard with Control-Z.

Remove the node. Available when right-clicking a selected node. Once a node is removed, it is added to the removed nodes list. You can see the removed nodes list by clicking Removed Nodes.

Node kind or group
• Never show
• Do not follow any connections
• Do not follow connections
to ...

• Never show—Never show the selected node kind or group in visualizations and models. You can cancel the never show removal rule by clicking Removed Nodes and deleting the Exclude node kind or Exclude group rule from the removal Rules tab. You can save the never show removal rule as a global rule by clicking the global rule icon. If you save the rule as a global rule, it is applied to all visualizations on the appliance.
• Do not follow any connections—Creates a rule to prevent following any connections from this node kind or group.
• Do not follow connections to ...— Highlights the selected (source) SI and prompts you to to select a destination. Nodes that the selected SI is not communicating with are dimmed and cannot be selected. When you select the destination node, it is highlighted, and a rule is created which prevents that type of relationship being followed. Preventing particular types of relationship being followed is typically used to prevent a large number of relationships being followed from a server to agents running on the server. This operation is not required frequently as TKU patterns now suppress known occurrences of "over-linking". If you choose not to follow a connection to a node, that node is not suppressed, but that route to the node is suppressed. If the node is reached through another connection, it is displayed.

This is simply a display option, no nodes or groups are deleted. You can show the suppressed connections using the plus control described in Additional controls or the context menu header described in Related, removed, and suppressed nodes in the context sensitive menu.

Do not create candidate SI node kind

Shown when right-clicking a Candidate Software Instance. Opens a dialog to create a rule preventing creation of this kind of candidate SI in the future and deleting any existing candidate SIs of this kind. The deletion of candidate SI is not limited to the current visualization or application model, it operates on the entire datastore.

Creating a rule to delete candidate SIs may affect other existing models. See Candidate software instances for more information.

Expand collection

A collection is an automatically created group of closely related items. Expand collection expands the selected collection so that the individual nodes are visible in the view. The nodes from the expanded collection are highlighted. You can see what is contained in the collection using Preview collection.

Preview collection

Shows a popup window with the expanded contents of the selected collection. There is an Expand Collection control in the popup window which enables you to expand the collection.

Hide all highlighting

Hides all highlighting that shows the nodes from an expanded collection.

Open in new tab/window

Opens the node in a new tab or window, depending on your browser preferences. Available when you right-click a node.

Remove link

Deletes the selected link. Available when you right-click a link between two nodes.

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Zoom in

In select mode, return to drag mode

When viewing the context menu, close the menu

When viewing a dialog, close the dialog