Infrastructure Diagram

The Infrastructure Diagram provides a visual representation of your AWS resources and how they relate to each other. Available from the Resource Explorer, it renders your discovered resources as an interactive graph where nodes represent resources and edges represent the connections between them. This gives you an immediate, intuitive understanding of your infrastructure's structure without having to piece it together from individual resource details.

Diagram vs. Architecture Map

Guardian Pro provides two visual representations of your infrastructure, each designed for a different purpose:

Feature	Infrastructure Diagram	Architecture Map
Location	Resource Explorer	Architecture Advisor
Focus	Resource inventory and relationships	Architectural analysis and risk overlay
Risk overlay	No	Yes -- risks and findings are highlighted
Failure simulation	No	Yes -- launch simulations from the map
VPC grouping	Basic	Advanced with multi-VPC boundaries
Best for	Understanding what you have	Analysing how it behaves

The Infrastructure Diagram is your go-to for resource-centric exploration, while the Architecture Map adds analytical layers for architecture advisory.

tip

If you are exploring your infrastructure to understand its structure, start with the Infrastructure Diagram. If you are investigating risks, planning for resilience, or preparing for an architecture review, use the Architecture Map.

What the Diagram Shows

The Infrastructure Diagram renders your resources as an interactive graph:

Resource Nodes

Each AWS resource appears as a node on the diagram, displaying:

• Service icon -- The AWS service icon for instant visual identification
• Resource name -- The friendly name or resource ID
• Resource type -- The specific type within the service

Resources are colour-coded by service category, making it easy to visually distinguish compute resources from databases, networking from storage, and so on.

Relationship Edges

Lines connecting resource nodes represent the relationships and dependencies between them:

• Solid lines indicate direct dependencies (a Lambda function connected to a DynamoDB table)
• Line direction indicates the dependency direction (from the dependent resource to the resource it depends on)

Layout

The diagram uses an intelligent automatic layout algorithm that:

• Minimises edge crossings for clarity
• Groups related resources together
• Distributes resources across the canvas to avoid overlap
• Positions resources in a logical flow from entry points to backend services

Interacting with the Diagram

Navigation

• Pan -- Click and drag on the canvas background to move around
• Zoom -- Use the scroll wheel or pinch gesture to zoom in and out
• Fit to view -- Use the zoom controls to fit the entire diagram on screen
• Reset -- Return to the default zoom level and position

Selecting Resources

Click on any resource node to:

• Highlight its connections -- All directly connected resources and their edges are emphasised, while unrelated resources are dimmed
• View summary information -- A brief summary of the resource appears, including its type, region, and any associated findings
• Navigate to details -- Click through to the full Resource Details view

Filtering

Apply filters to control which resources appear on the diagram:

• Service type -- Show only specific AWS services (for example, just EC2 and RDS)
• Region -- Focus on resources in a particular region
• Resource type -- Narrow to specific resource types within a service

Filtering is especially useful in large environments where the full diagram would be too dense to read comfortably.

info

Filters applied in the Resource Explorer table view are carried over to the Infrastructure Diagram when you switch between views. This means you can filter your table to a specific subset and then visualise just those resources in the diagram.

Common Use Cases

Understanding Service Connectivity

The diagram makes it immediately clear how your services connect. Questions that are difficult to answer by reading configuration files become obvious in the visual view:

• Which services does this load balancer route to?
• What databases does this application tier depend on?
• How many resources are in this VPC?
• Which services share the same security group?

New Team Member Onboarding

Showing a new engineer the Infrastructure Diagram gives them an immediate mental model of the environment they will be working in. The visual layout communicates the overall architecture far more effectively than a list of resources.

Change Planning

Before making infrastructure changes, review the diagram to understand the context around the resource you plan to modify:

• What resources are directly connected?
• Are there unexpected dependencies?
• How isolated is the change, or does it touch shared infrastructure?

Documentation and Communication

Export the diagram as an image to include in:

• Architecture decision records
• Runbooks and operational documentation
• Incident reports and post-mortems
• Presentations to stakeholders

tip

The Infrastructure Diagram updates automatically with each resource discovery scan. Unlike manually maintained diagrams, it always reflects your current infrastructure without manual upkeep.

Exporting the Diagram

You can export the Infrastructure Diagram as a high-resolution PNG image for use in documentation, presentations, or compliance evidence:

1. Arrange the diagram to show the view you want to capture
2. Apply any filters to focus on the relevant resources
3. Click the Export button
4. The diagram is rendered and downloaded as a PNG file

The exported image includes all visible resources, their connections, and their labels.

Large Environment Considerations

For environments with hundreds or thousands of resources, the Infrastructure Diagram provides several features to maintain usability:

Progressive Filtering

Start with a broad filter (for example, a specific VPC or service) and progressively narrow your view. This prevents the diagram from becoming too dense and allows you to explore sections of your infrastructure methodically.

Performance Optimisation

The diagram uses optimised rendering techniques to maintain smooth interactions even with a large number of resources. Panning, zooming, and selecting resources remain responsive regardless of the total resource count.

Service-Level Views

For very large environments, consider viewing the diagram one service at a time. Filtering to just "EC2" or just "RDS" gives you a focused view of that service layer and its connections, which is often more useful than trying to view everything at once.

note

The Infrastructure Diagram and the Architecture Map draw from the same underlying resource and relationship data. They are two visualisations of the same information, optimised for different use cases.

Relationship to Other Features

The Infrastructure Diagram connects to several other Guardian Pro features:

• Resource Details -- Click any node to navigate to the full resource detail view
• Action Centre -- Resources with findings are indicated, and you can navigate to the Action Centre to address them
• Architecture Map -- For deeper analysis including risk overlays and failure simulation, switch to the Architecture Map in the Architecture Advisor
• AI Assistant -- Ask the assistant about resources you see in the diagram for additional context and analysis

Next Steps

• Resource Details -- Click on any resource in the diagram to inspect its full configuration.
• Architecture Map -- Switch to the Architecture Advisor for risk overlays and failure simulation.
• Browsing Resources -- Return to the table view for detailed filtering and sorting.
• Resource Discovery -- Learn how the resources shown in the diagram are discovered.