The IPD Approach
Published: November 12, 2007 | Updated: February 25, 2008
The IPD series is a collection of documents that will lead the reader through a sequence of core decision points to design an infrastructure for Microsoft products. Every guide uses this methodological approach and shares a consistent look and feel.
These guides are structured and intended to complement and augment the product documentation. Although the guides educate readers on the key design decision points that infrastructure professionals must understand, they are not intended to provide a feature education for a particular technology. However, additional references are provided, linking to further information on the technology.
Each release in the series addresses a unique infrastructure technology or scenario and will consist of an Infrastructure Planning and Design guide and a Microsoft PowerPoint® presentation to cover the technology or solution.
Document Structure
Each IPD guide is designed to provide a consistent structure for addressing the decisions/activities that are most critical to the successful planning of a given infrastructure technology or solution.
Each guide is divided into sections that thoroughly explain the following processes:
- The Design Process
- The Design Decision Steps
The Design Process
This section gives the reader a high-level introduction to the processes that the guide will follow. It contains the following elements:
Decisions list. A high-level list of decision points and/or activities that need to be addressed in order to complete a given design.
Decision flow diagram. Gives the reader a graphical representation of the decision process that the guide uses. Each decision point is mapped to the decisions listed previously but allows the reader to see the entire decision flow for the process for the guide.
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Figure 2. Example decision flow diagram
Information collection. Lists the information that should be gathered as inputs into the process. An explanation is provided to readers so they understand how the data collected will be used. In addition, each element of information is mapped to the decisions so that readers understand when the information will be required by the process.
Applicable Scenarios. Describes which scenarios were considered in the creation of the guide. This fourth section helps the reader understand whether requirements for their design will be addressed by the guide. An effort is made to cover the most common scenarios so that most readers can find value in the guide.
The Design Decision Steps
Each design decision step is documented in a consistent manner to guide readers through the process presented in the guide. Each decision/activity point consists of four subsections:
Decision or Activity. This section provides readers with background information, any necessary context, and general considerations to keep in mind when planning a given infrastructure technology or solution.
Options or Tasks. If a decision is being made, then multiple options are presented. For each option, readers are given the background information necessary to evaluate the choice as well as any subquestions that need to be answered when making that choice. If a task is being performed, then readers are provided with the background information around the task.
Evaluating the Characteristics. To make an informed choice, readers need to understand the trade-offs that are inherently included when making a particular decision. This section provides a means for comparing each of the options—and what their impact would be—against certain characteristics of the infrastructure.
The following table lists the full range of characteristics discussed in the evaluation sections. Only those characteristics relevant to a particular option or task are included in each section.
Characteristic
Description
Complexity
This characteristic relates the effect a choice will have on overall infrastructure complexity.
Cost
This value shows the relative cost associated with a particular option. This takes into account initial and repetitive costs associated with the decision.
Fault Tolerance
The Fault Tolerance characteristic indicates the effect the option will have on the ability of the infrastructure to sustain operation during system failures.
Performance
Performance is rated based on the effect the option will have on the performance for the technology featured in the guide. This does not necessarily reflect the impact on other technologies within the infrastructure.
Scalability
This characteristic depicts the effect the option will have on the ability of the solution to be augmented to achieve higher sustained performance within the infrastructure.
Security
This value reflects whether the option will have a positive or negative impact on overall infrastructure security.
Each of the design options is compared against the above characteristics and is subjectively rated in order to provide a relative weighting of the option against the characteristic. The options are not explicitly rated against each other as there are too many unknowns about the business drivers to accurately compare them.
The ratings take two forms:
Cost and Complexity are rated on a scale of High, Medium, Low.
The remainder of the characteristics is rated on the scale listed in the following table.
Symbol
The characteristics are presented either as two-column or three-column tables. The two-column table is used when the characteristic is applicable to all options or when there are no options available—for example, when performing a task.
The three-column table is used to present an option, the description, and the effect—in that order—for the characteristic.
When considering infrastructure architecture, there are a number of additional characteristics that are either used as input to a decision or are realized during operations as a result of an architectural decision. The following chart contains a list of these additional considerations that the authors used in creating these guides. They are not referenced in the individual guides but are presented here to help describe the intent applied to each guide.
Characteristic
Description
Audit
This characteristic depicts the impact a choice will have on the ability to successfully audit operations within the infrastructure as a whole and—specifically—within the featured technology.
Availability
This indicates the effect of a choice on the ability of a technology and the related infrastructure to achieve highly available operation.
Compliance
This characteristic indicates whether a choice will have an impact on the ability of a business to demonstrate or achieve compliance with certain regulatory policies.
Continuity
Continuity relates the effect a choice will have on the ability of the business to continue operations during system failures (related to fault tolerance).
Interoperability
This indicates whether a choice will have an impact on the ability of the technology to interoperate with other technologies within the infrastructure.
Risk
This characteristic reflects whether the business will experience risk based on the choice made for a particular option.
- Validating with the Business. There are times that decisions being made within the business may affect the infrastructure design. This section is used to provide additional questions that should be asked of the business leaders. In addition, this provides a means of including check points within the design process to give the business leaders a way to provide additional input into the design process.
Additional Sections
The “Dependencies” section documents any dependencies that are relevant to the guide’s topic. The items listed in this section need to be considered and understood during the design process as they could have an impact on the overall design. Additional IPD guides are referenced here if they cover a dependent service or technology.
The “Conclusion” section provides a summary of the guide and identifies any outstanding issues that need to be resolved. In addition, links to further reading may be included in this section to provide more background on the topic being discussed.
The “Appendix” is an optional section within the IPD guides. Generally, this will contain one or more job aids to assist in documenting the design or additional collection information required for the design. Additional information that does not fit in another section of the guide might also be presented here.
PowerPoint Presentations
Each IPD guide will be accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation deck that can be used to describe the design process for the technology. The slides cover the steps from a high level and are also useful when explaining the effects of certain decision processes to business stakeholders.
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