The steps involved in setting up your Servers depend on whether you want to model additional information about the Servers that (EA)<sup>2</sup> does not provide. For example, you may want to know how much RAM and disk space a Server has. The basic process is to create a Server Model for each type of server you buy from your vendors. You may configure each Server Model with the extra tags and embedded elements, e.g. an operating system and common devices you want to track. Once you have configured your Server Model, you can create Server instances of those Server Models. Creating an instance of a Server Model creates a Server instance rather than a Server Model instance which is normally what would be done. (EA)<sup>2</sup> overrides the instance creation to give you a Server that not only has the tags from the Server Model, but has its own tagged values as well.
If you have a lot of different Server Models, here is a tip that will save you time and add consistency whenever you set up a new Server Model. You can create a configuration that will apply to all Server Models. We call this a Server Meta Configuration. You can create a single default configuration for all Server Models or several to handle specific situations. For example, you could create a Server Meta Configuration for all Server Models with a specific operating system and additional components like an application server and database software. Once you have created the Server Meta Configurations, you can create your Server Models from them and then tweak each Server Model as needed. Finally, you create your Servers as instances of the Server Models, possibly overriding the defaults provided by the Server Model and then adding the specific components that are deployed on the Server.
There are two subpackages under the Servers package;
Server Meta Configurations, which holds the configurations to be used as templates for creating Server Models.
Server Models, which holds the various Server Models that you can purchase from your vendors.
The Servers themselves will be created directly under the Servers package, the root package for everything related to servers.
Creating a Server Metamodel
Follow the steps below to create a Server Metamodel.
Drag a Server Model from the (EA)<sup>2</sup> Infrastructure Architecture Toolbox onto the Server Meta Configuration diagram. Give it an appropriate name. Add a new tagged value for each additional property you want to track and optionally give a value that will be the default when creating all Server Models from this configuration. For example you create a RAM tag and give it a value of 2 GB.
Open the Server's child diagram by double clicking on the Server and then drag the Server onto the diagram.
If you want to see the tagged values in the diagram, double click on the diagram, open the elements tab and enable the Tags option box.
Add any embedded elements that are normally provided with Servers built from this configuration. For example, you may want to add an operating system or a disk array. Simply drag the elements from the Project Browser onto the Server Model as embedded parts. You can provide short name for the element but most of the context will come from the classifiers name which will show on the embedded part.
Your Server Meta Configuration is complete. You can always make changes to it later.
The following figure shows the Server Meta Configuration for Solaris 9.
