Cloud Architect Design Tool (CADT) unifies architecture design, resource deployment, and O&M into a single visual workflow, reducing the time and effort required to build and manage cloud infrastructure.
Ease of use
CADT covers the full lifecycle — from architecture design and resource configuration to solution validation and deployment — through a visual interface, with no coding required.
Design your architecture visually. Drag and drop cloud resources onto the canvas to build your architecture diagram.
Configure resources inline. Set resource specifications and relationships directly in the visual editor.
Validate and deploy in one flow. Run solution validation, then deploy to your cloud environment — all without leaving the console.
This end-to-end visual workflow reduces the learning curve and lowers O&M overhead for teams at any experience level.
Template integration
CADT provides a rich library of application architecture templates covering official Alibaba Cloud solutions across industries and use cases. Start from a template, adapt it to your business requirements, and extend it as needed — rather than building from scratch.
To access templates, go to the CADT console, click Create > Official Solutions in the top navigation bar, and choose Templates, Flows, or Serverless Templates. On the Official Solution Center page, filter by category using the top tab bar:
All Templates, Best Practices, Product Page Templates
Industry Applications, Security and Compliance, General Applications
Data Analysis, Cloud Network, Transportation & Logistics
Gaming, SAP, Video Cloud, Anolis OS
Each template card shows a thumbnail of the architecture diagram along with usage details. Use the Recommended drop-down list and search box in the upper-right corner to narrow your selection.
Templates eliminate the time spent on initial infrastructure setup and give you a validated architecture foundation to build on.
Intelligent and efficient
Before deployment, CADT automatically validates resource relationships and specification configurations across your entire architecture. It also supports resource price queries, letting you estimate costs before committing.
In the Resource Validation dialog box, each resource is checked individually. For example, a security group, ApsaraDB RDS, Classic Load Balancer (CLB) (private network), Elastic Compute Service (ECS), and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) all show Validation Passed. When all resources pass, the overall status shows Validation Succeeded, and you can click Next: Price List to continue.
Catching configuration errors before deployment reduces failed deployments and eliminates the manual effort of cross-checking resource dependencies.
Monitoring and assurance
After deployment, CADT provides unified monitoring for all deployed resources, giving you a single place to track service health, identify issues, and act on them — without switching between multiple consoles.
The resource validation feature gives precise, actionable feedback. For example, a validation result might show that a VSwitch, region, security group, and VPC passed validation, while a block storage resource with the specification cloud_essd failed with the error message Only one Disk can be bound at a time!. The overall status shows Validation Failed, and you can click Locate in the Actions column to go directly to the affected resource and fix its configuration.
This pinpoint error feedback reduces the time spent diagnosing post-deployment failures and simplifies day-to-day architecture O&M.