Deployment View Architecture

The deployment diagram maps software components to infrastructure — which containers run on which nodes, which nodes are in which availability zones, and which network boundaries separate them. The deployment diagram is the artifact that operations teams use daily: where is this service running, how is it accessed, and what happens when this node goes down? Without a deployment diagram, the answer to every operational question starts with "let me check."

1. Infrastructure Mapping Show every deployment target: servers, containers, serverless functions, managed services. Group them by environment (production, staging), by region, and by availability zone. Label each with the instance type, scaling configuration, and the software it runs. The deployment diagram is the map that tells the on-call engineer exactly where the failing component lives.
2. Network Boundaries Show VPCs, subnets, security groups, and firewalls as nested containers. Public-facing services are in public subnets. Internal services are in private subnets. Databases are in isolated subnets with no internet access. The network boundary diagram is the security architecture made visible — it shows what can communicate with what and what the firewall prevents.
3. Failure Domains Annotate the diagram with failure domains — what goes down when this availability zone fails, what goes down when this managed service is unavailable, what goes down when the network between regions partitions. Failure domain annotations transform the deployment diagram from a static map into a resilience assessment.