Conceptual vs Logical Design: Creating Clean Design Processes for Private Cloud Architecture Teams

The easy use of modern cloud platforms and technologies enables architects and engineers to address desired business outcomes faster. Professional Architects consult the business in order to identify business requirements, and from those we look for solutions that implement capabilities that directly address these needs.

Making poor design decisions has a major effect on the overall success of the platform or technology being implemented. Successful project management expertise is required to ensure that there is a clear and concise plan in place.

A "well-architected" design identifies technical "pillars" and applies a series of principles or design values that clearly map back to the business requirements.

I like to discuss these design values with my customers to ensure that I capture whats most important to them. And perhaps augment their own design processes with my recommendations.

These design values can be generally described as:

1. Availability: How the technologies keep working when things go wrong

2. Manageabilty: How we manage the technologies, perhaps using a control plane

3. Performance: How the technologies are expected to perform during normal (or abnormal) conditions- such as a complete cluster or site outage

4. Recoverability: How to restore the technologies or workloads after things go wrong

5. Security: How we secure our technologies (platform &/or workloads)

6. Scaling: How we scale-in/out our technical environments to support business objectives

A visual guide to the above:

AMPRS+S Design Methodology

During the initial phases of the engagement, you would conduct thorough design workshops where business requirements are obtained. You should also strive to determine assumptions, risks, and constraints. These would be conceptual design elements. In the diagram below, we have these conceptual elements on the left, along with a very simplified diagram showing the "ten thousand ft. view" on the right.

Conceptual to Logical Design Visual Associations

Based on the info obtained during the conceptual workshops, we can use this info to make logical design decisions (DD) as shown in the middle part of the diagram. You should try to identify at least 1 "DD" for each of the design values stated in the article above.

Once DD´s have been made and agreed upon we can use these to create a design diagram that shows how both conceptual and logical design in visual form.

The information above is a fantastic starting place to start work on your High Level Design (HLD).

These methodologies can be applied to almost any technology and from any vendor as well.