Infrastructure Environments Beta
Visually design, preview, and deploy complete infrastructure stacks with an interactive graph-based builder.
Overview
The Infrastructure Environments feature provides a visual designer for planning and deploying cloud infrastructure. Design your architecture by adding servers, networks, firewalls, and load balancers to an interactive graph, configure their properties, preview the generated Terraform code, estimate costs, and deploy with a review-and-confirm workflow.
Every architecture diagram generates valid Terraform code behind the scenes. You can review, export, and modify the Terraform configuration before deployment.
Creating an Architecture
Navigate to Infrastructure Environments
Open Virtual Datacenter > Infrastructure Environments from the sidebar. This feature is marked as Beta.
Create a new architecture
Click Create Architecture. Provide a name and optional description, then select the target cloud location.
Open the designer
The visual graph canvas opens where you can add components and configure their properties through the side panel.
Adding Components
Add components to the canvas by clicking the add button on an existing node and selecting the component type and quantity. Available component types:
| Component | Description | Configurable Properties |
|---|---|---|
| Server | Virtual machines with configurable compute resources. | Hostname, OS template, CPU, memory, disk, SSH keys, backups, monitoring, scripts, multicloud replication. |
| LAN | Private local area networks connecting your servers. | Network settings, subnet size, DNS servers. |
| WAN | Wide area network connections providing internet access. | WAN name, network speed. |
| Firewall | Security rules controlling network traffic. | Forwarding rules (protocols, ports, source, destination). |
| Load Balancer | Traffic distribution across multiple servers. | Forwarding rules (ports, protocol, backend servers). |
Components are connected automatically based on their parent-child relationships in the architecture graph. For example, servers are placed inside networks, and load balancers connect to servers within the same network.
Configuring Component Properties
Click any component on the canvas to open its properties panel. Configure resource specifications, naming, and connectivity options. Changes are reflected immediately on the canvas and in the generated code.
Viewing Generated Terraform Code
Toggle the code preview switch in the architecture toolbar to view the auto-generated Terraform (HCL) configuration alongside the visual graph. The code is organized into multiple files (displayed as tabs) and presented in a read-only code editor. You can:
- Review the complete Terraform configuration across multiple files
- Copy the code to use in your own Terraform workflows
- Validate the configuration before deployment
Cost Preview
The cost preview panel displays an estimated monthly cost for the designed architecture based on your current billing plan. Costs are updated dynamically as you add, remove, or modify components.
Cost previews are estimates based on the defined resource allocations. Actual costs may vary depending on usage patterns such as network transfer and backup consumption.
Deploying an Architecture
Review the architecture
Verify all components, connections, and configurations are correct. Check the Terraform code and cost estimate.
Review and Deploy
Click Summary to review the cost estimate, then click Deploy. A review dialog will open showing the Terraform plan output. After reviewing, confirm the deployment. The system will execute the Terraform apply step and provision all defined resources.
Monitor deployment
Track the deployment progress in the review dialog. The Terraform apply output will be displayed in real-time. You will also see deployment logs in the architecture's logs panel.
Deploying an architecture provisions real resources that incur charges. Ensure the cost preview aligns with your budget before deploying.
Modifying Deployed Architectures
After deployment, you can return to the architecture designer to modify the infrastructure. Changes are applied as incremental updates -- only modified or new components are affected. Removed components will be deprovisioned.
Removing components from a deployed architecture will delete the corresponding resources and their data. Review changes carefully before applying updates.
Architecture Templates
Xelon HQ provides pre-built architecture templates for common deployment patterns:
- Web application stack: Load balancer, web servers, application servers, and database server on a private network.
- Development environment: Single server with development tools and a private network.
- High-availability cluster: Redundant servers across availability zones with load balancing and failover.
Select a template when creating a new architecture to start with a pre-configured design that you can customize.
Best Practices
- Start with a template and customize it rather than building from scratch for common patterns.
- Use descriptive names for all components to make the Terraform code and architecture diagram readable.
- Review Terraform code before deploying to understand exactly what resources will be created.
- Check cost estimates against your budget before deployment.
- Version your architectures by exporting Terraform code and storing it in version control alongside your application code.
- Test in a staging environment before deploying production architectures.