We're huge fans of productivity tools and applications, especially ones that save time and help keep things organised. While we are all about saving you time diagramming your cloud infrastructure, finding resources quickly and automating the discovery of everything you have running in the cloud, there are some great applications out there dedicated to organising your work life, managing projects and teams and keeping on top of whatever you have going on.

When you are building applications and deploying them using containers, getting a visual representation of what pods or tasks are running is an invaluable tool to check that everything is as it should be.

One of the key roles of cloud network managers is containing costs. It is so easy to add to networks and scale resources in the never ending quest for lower latency and better application performance.

With the wide adoption of containers as a method of rapidly deploying software applications to the cloud, the need to visualise workloads has been gaining momentum. The need to see the status of pods and tasks in container clusters is a major benefit when you visualise containerised workloads on an interactive diagram.

Hava has always generated diagrams for traditional compute VPCs and virtual networks and for a long time has also automatically generated AWS ECS Cluster diagrams when clusters are detected in a connected AWS account.

The ability to diagram other containerised workloads, particularly the market leading Kubernetes  has now been added to the core functionality of Hava so you can now view AWS EKS Kubernetes clusters, Azure Kubernetes Clusters (AKS), Google Kubernetes Clusters (GKE) and also stand alone Kubernetes Clusters 

One of the diagrams that is automatically generated when you connect your AWS account to Hava is the AWS ECS Container View. 

If you are building solutions on Microsoft Azure, at some point you'll want to draw some Azure architecture diagrams 

When you have accurate and up to date architecture diagrams on hand it enables you to visually explain your network infrastructure to both your engineering and operations team and also provide management with an easy to understand representation of what you are building and managing.

Accurate up to date diagrams also let you know that your network has been built in line with your design.

If you are onboarding new engineers, or engaging external consultants, you can bring them up to speed very quickly with a well laid out Azure network topology diagram.

The problem with traditional diagrams has always been the time it takes to draw them, which is why it's better to consider generating them instead. If you use manual drag and drop diagram software or drawing packages like Microsoft Visio the process can take forever which is why up to date Azure network topology diagrams are rarely on hand. Cloud engineers almost always don't have the time or motivation to sit down and draw Azure architecture diagrams. Who doesn't have far more important or pressing issues to work on.

This is where you can leverage Hava to help you create Azure diagrams.

If you are taking on a new client or development project, having access to infrastructure documentation is a massive advantage when trying to understand exactly what is running on your network. Come to think of it, with the complex nature of cloud consoles and network configurations you may be surprised at what you have running in your existing Azure infrastructure.

Back in the day our team provided expert cloud consulting services. When we took on a new client, diagramming the new client's infrastructure was always the first job in the process. It was always, without exception, time consuming, laborious but necessary in establishing exactly what was going on in the client's cloud accounts prior to starting work on improving or redesigning the network infrastructure.

So imagine your worst nightmare. The cloud based application you have just inherited management and support for has just crashed. The support lines are lit up like a Christmas tree, the support ticket system is having a meltdown and everyone is looking at you for a solution.

Hava adds Kubernetes Cluster Diagrams

When you work with Microsoft Azure, you no doubt appreciate the value of great network topology diagrams. Good network infrastructure diagrams provide a visual cue for better communication and understanding of your azure cloud infrastructure at all levels of your organisation, from management down to freshly onboarded engineers and consultants. But should you draw Azure diagrams yourself, or automate the process?