Various aspects of the invention provide a method, apparatus, and software
for selecting interconnectivity rules for a computer network environment
and visualization on a display of a data processing system
interconnectivity rules in an auto provisioning environment, including:
selecting a network environment specification having characteristics
describing the environment, the characteristics including: number of
network security tiers, firewalls, and other network constraints;
displaying a graphical representation of the selected network
environment, including security tiers, and proposed firewalls, to a user
on the display; selecting network objects for the selected network
environment, the network objects being selected from a group of objects
including: operating systems and other software applications having
predefined or configurable characteristics including interconnectivity
rules, and firewall rules; populating the displayed network environment
with the selected objects; determining network interconnectivity
requirements in the selected network environment for the selected objects
from their characteristics; and displaying graphical visualizations of
the selected objects and graphical visualizations of the network
interconnectivity requirements of the objects in appropriate regions of
the displayed network environment.