Drawing and configuring a valid design is one of the most important steps in deploying your cloud solution. If your configuration is wrong, or cloud resources are positioned in invalid places, your design will never deploy.

To deploy successfully, your diagram has to meet not only the validation requirements of Microsoft Azure but also policy set by your organisation.

The Cloud Maker Problems Framework is designed to identify validation and policy issues, and surfacing them in an easy to use interface called the Problems Panel. There are also several other helpful indicators to help you identify and resolve the problem quickly.

The Problems Panel is accessed using the problems icon on the Left Dock. This icon is either a blue icon with an exclamation mark (when there are no problems) or a red icon with a number (if problems exist).

Once opened, the Problems Panel will list any problems that exist with your current design.

Each problem is presented using a Problem Card that summarises the problem. If the problem is related to configuration, the Problem Card will link directly to the Properties Panel where the problem exists.

As well as the Problems Panel, Cloud Maker also provides other useful problem indicators to highlight where problems exist within your design.

The droplet indicator is a small red dot in the top right corner of a droplet. If this indicator is present, this droplet has an issue that needs to be resolved before the design can be published and then deployed.

If you want to hide the droplet problems indicator, press the Hide Problems icon on the Toolbar.

If the problem relates to a configuration issue. The Properties Panel will display useful problems indicators to help you locate the property that is causing the problem.

Firstly, the Properties Tree pane will display small red dot indicators at every level of the Property Tree until you get to the branch that has the error.

Secondly, the property Quick Link and Property Input will be highlighted in red to show that the Property Input has a problem.

The Cloud Maker Problems Framework is highly extensible. It's designed to have individual validators plug in to provide multiple layers of validation.

Here's a list of current Cloud Maker validators:

Every Azure resource requires a name. With the name validator, we highlight which droplets are missing the name property and make it easy for you to find and enter the required data.

Cloud Maker has a powerful resource relationship engine. When you place a droplet inside a droplet container, Cloud Maker validates whether this is a valid location. If not, it will highlight the droplet and flag a problem on the Problems Panel!

See detailed information on our placement validator here.

Watch this space for more validators!