Element Libraries

ArchFlow supports a diverse set of element libraries, allowing you to build everything from standard flowcharts to detailed multi-cloud deployment topologies. Elements are grouped into 12 core categories.

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1. Cloud Architecture Libraries

ArchFlow features high-quality vector representations of official cloud service icons:

🅰️ AWS (Amazon Web Services)

• Purpose: Design infrastructure topologies on AWS.
• Key Elements:
  • EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
  • Lambda (Serverless Compute)
  • S3 (Simple Storage Service)
  • RDS (Relational Database Service)
  • DynamoDB (NoSQL Database)
  • API Gateway, ELB (Load Balancers), SNS/SQS (Messaging).

🟦 Azure (Microsoft Azure)

• Purpose: Model enterprise architectures hosted in Azure.
• Key Elements:
  • VM (Virtual Machines), App Service, Functions.
  • Aks (Azure Kubernetes Service), Container Instance.
  • Blob Storage, Disk Storage, Cosmos DB, SQL Database.
  • VNet, Load Balancer, Front Door, API Management.
  • Service Bus, Event Grid, Event Hubs.
  • Entra ID (Active Directory), Monitor.

🟨 Google Cloud (GCP)

• Purpose: Document architectures using Google Cloud infrastructure.
• Key Elements:
  • Compute Engine, App Engine, Cloud Run, GKE (Kubernetes Engine).
  • Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Firestore, Spanner.
  • VPC Network, Load Balancing, Cloud DNS.
  • Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks.
  • Cloud IAM, Cloud KMS, Cloud Operations (Monitoring/Logging).

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2. Infrastructure & System Design

For cloud-agnostic, general infrastructure planning:

⚙️ Compute Components / System Design

• Purpose: High-level system engineering blocks.
• Key Elements: Monolith applications, Microservices, Containers, Pods, Kubernetes clusters, Serverless blocks, Bare-metal servers, and Cron/Scheduler tasks.

🌐 Network & Edge

• Purpose: Network flow, routing, and traffic distribution.
• Key Elements: firewalls, general load balancers, DNS servers, routers, API gateways, CDN edges, and NAT gateways.

🗄️ Data & Storage

• Purpose: Storage topologies and caching layouts.
• Key Elements: SQL databases, NoSQL engines, Cache/Redis nodes, Object Storage, Block drives, and search indexing nodes (e.g. Search).

✉️ Messaging & Streaming

• Purpose: Event-driven designs and pub/sub pipelines.
• Key Elements: Message Queues, Event Buses, WebSocket channels, and streaming data processors.

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3. Operations, Security, & Users

🛡️ Security & Identity

• Purpose: Threat modeling and authentication diagrams.
• Key Elements: Identity Providers (IdP), Key Vaults / secret managers, WAFs, Certificate authorities, and IAM policies.

📊 Observability & DevOps

• Purpose: CI/CD pipelines and monitoring setups.
• Key Elements: Logging aggregators, APMs / Monitors, Alert managers, CI/CD runners, and analytics dashboards.

👥 Actors & Clients

• Purpose: Represent users, devices, and interfaces.
• Key Elements: Web browsers, Mobile apps, End Users (actors), IoT devices, and external API clients.

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4. Standard Shapes & Annotations

🟢 Standard Shapes

• Purpose: Classic flowcharting and block diagramming.
• Key Elements: Rectangles, Circles/Ovals, Cylinders (Data storage), Stacks, Queues, Parallelograms (I/O), Clocks, Webpages, and Code/SDK modules.

📝 Text & Annotations

• Purpose: Adding headers, descriptive paragraphs, and visual boundaries.
• Key Elements: Rich text blocks, floating annotations, callouts, and horizontal/vertical dividers.