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Exercise 13: Customers need ports; cards need slots

Watch the video presentation and/or read the full text below

There are various reasons why, in this case, we will not seek to drive the access chassis calculation directly from the service:

  • as we have seen above, there is a non-trivial, deployment calculation for the number of cards, and the chassis must be provisioned to match this actual number
  • the number might also be boosted for contingency, as mentioned in Exercise 10 above
  • a chassis might need to accommodate other types of cards.

The latter points are beyond the scope of this tutorial, but the first is good enough.

Instead, we must drive the chassis calculation by the number of cards installed.

Intuitively, we wish to connect the Access card and Access chassis elements. However, a new transformation element is required to reference the Access card as a demand driver, and, crucially, to define more specifically what result is intended. This structure also allows for richer, secondary drivers, as we shall see in Exercise 18 below.

  1. Click the Transformation button on the toolbar, to create the element, and then rename it as No of access cards.
  2. Access the Input and Transformation dialog from the icon menu. You will see that this default transformation comprises an Output Unit, a Multiplier, and an Input. These fundamentals are common to all transformation types.
  3. Click Type on the dialog menu. The drop-down menu, as illustrated below, indicates that this is a Multiplier transformation, and lists many further possibilities.
  4. Press <Esc> (or click Multiplier) to leave the Type as-is.

Figure 30: Output Unit, Multiplier, and Input are common to all transformation types

Note: the other transformation types are beyond the scope of this tutorial.

We will make the relevant connections directly between the icons, as before.

  1. Arrange the transformation, relative to the access resources, as shown below.
  2. Press <Ctrl+Q> to connect the Access card resource to the transformation, again using the ‘quick-link target’ which appears over the transformation icon to pre-select Basis = Installed Units. A pink, transformation link is drawn between the elements.
  3. Hover over the pink arrow. A popup tooltip describes the link between the elements. This detail is also reflected in the Input field in the Input and Transformation dialog.
  4. Double-click the pink arrow (or double-click the Input field in the Input and Transformation dialog) to access the Input dialog. Click the drop-down in the formula bar to review the other options for the Basis input (which are offered directly if you skip the ‘quick-link target’ in step 6 above).
  5. Press <Esc> (or click Installed Units) to leave the Basis as-is. The other alternatives are beyond the scope of this tutorial.
  6. Set the Output Unit = Cards (for clarity in the results, as always).
  7. Leave the Multiplier = 1.0 as per default.

Figure 31: The connection from the Access card resource identifies Installed Units as the demand driver

  1. Press <Ctrl+Q> to connect the transformationto the Access chassis resource. There is no ‘quick-link target’ this time, and a prompt appears for which resource input to set, with options Requirements (the default), Sites and Planned Units.
  2. Click OK (or press <Enter>) to select Requirements. The transformation is linked to the resource as illustrated. The other options are beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Figure 32: The connection to the Access chassis resource is a familiar requirement link

This structure means that each installed unit of the card requires one slot of a chassis.

Things that you should have seen and understood

Transformation element, Input and Transformation
Output Unit, Multiplier, Input; Type; Basis, Resource
Choose which resource input to set

 

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