Links
Overview
Selecting the right architecture when building cloud-first applications can be challenging. It is not uncommon to be presented with several similar methods to solve the same problem. It can also be difficult to determine the right balance of self-sufficiency and security when integrating technology across teams. Scaled Sense addresses these challenges with our implementation of Links.
Links can be found on Services in the Scaled Sense platform. Each Service offers available Links that can be established to build relationships between other Services. Linking Services and making these connections establish clear relationships between your technology assets, something that would otherwise be difficult to visualize in cloud providers without additional architectural documentation. Creating Links through Scaled Sense effectively documents the dependencies between Services in your organization and helps promote a shared understanding of the topology of an organization.
When a Link is created, Scaled Sense establishes a relationship between the Services in our platform and provisions the necessary "glue" to link the two Services together. Sometimes this provisioning is as simple as granting the required permissions to a service account and others involve more complex tasks such as creating the necessary security boundaries and deployment objects to support tasks such as application hosting.
When getting started with a new Service, establish a plan for how the relationships to other Services within the organization should be defined. For example, if the organization has multiple Hosting Workload Services, it is important to select the correct one or provision another Hosting Workload Service to support the planned Service. Many of the available Links set up trusted relationships between the connected Services, so having a plan and being intentional about the connections that are created are important to building great architectures with Scaled Sense.
Associations
Links represent the connections between Services within your environment. Their associations to other resources within the platform are shown and described below:
Services
Services are the components in Scaled Sense eligible for connection with Links.
Currently, Links establish one-to-one relationships between Services, however, multiple links may be targeted at the same shared service. For example, Service A, Service B, and Service C can all establish an App Deployment Link to the same Hosting Workload. Conversely, Service A cannot create a Link to more than one Hosting Workload.