Anyone know of a good tool to make these types of diagrams? Preferably automatically? I've been meaning to create something that plugs into Chef and or nmap/netstat. In my experience, any diagram/inventory/whatever that isn't automatically updated invariably drifts from reality.

The diagram follows the style of the AWS Reference Architectures[0]. I have yet to find a published set of diagram components that compare well to that style.

Edit: Juan Domenech[1] has a small custom made component pallet in png form. And, it looks like the original diagrams are custom Adobe Illustrator drawings[2].

[0] http://aws.amazon.com/architecture/

[1] http://blog.domenech.org/2012/06/aws-diagrams-palette-v10.ht...

[2] http://blog.domenech.org/2012/05/aws-diagrams.html

That's an awesome diagram and quite a few servers (but latency kills the map-overlay experience, i think a static png or svg might have been better...) Interesting that servers are are either paired autoscaling over two AZs, or statically provisioned in three AZs - or am i mis-reading the diagram? Two entire mirrors for testing and staging must have become a pretty big cost.

For others outside the US confused about what the application actually does, and what the Narwhal in the testing/staging pictures refers to, this helped; http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/built-...

This is really great - I'd love to have a similar diagram for data flow and components of the systems I work on. It might not benefit engineers very much but it'd be fantastic for clients or some of the less technical people in the company.

I wonder how hard (I'm thinking hard?) it would be to have a tool for something like this, making the layout easy and revealing more and more information as you zoom in.

Even better if it was live and updating with system metrics.

When folks from the Romney campaign complained of technical deficiencies in his get-out-the-vote operation, pundits and news outlets intimated that the complaints were scapegoating IT for bad policy.

But looking at this diagram, I'm pleased to see that engineering was a big part of the Obama campaign. It really hammers home how badly out of their league Romney's TechOps team was.

http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/obama/

Is each one of those little grey cuboids an virtual machine? If so, that is rather a lot of virtual machines. I am surprised so many were necessary. What kind of load was this system handling?

i guess this leaked. ;)