Patent ID: 7814192

Claim:
A method for automatically deploying a network design, comprising: receiving a network design at a computing device coupled to a network, wherein the network design includes at least a physical topology for one or more hardware devices to be deployed in the network and a logical configuration for the one or more hardware devices to be deployed in the network; validating one or more topology specifications extracted from the network design, wherein the extracted topology specifications include the physical topology and the logical configuration for the one or more hardware devices to be deployed in the network, and wherein validating the extracted topology specifications includes: discovering an actual physical topology for the network using the computing device, wherein the actual physical topology includes one or more hardware devices physically installed in the network; validating the network design in response to determining that the actual physical topology discovered for the network corresponds to the physical topology in the topology specifications extracted from the network design; and displaying one or more error messages on the computing device in response to determining that the actual physical topology discovered for the network does not correspond to the physical topology in the topology specifications extracted from the network design, wherein the error messages displayed on the computing device include information for correcting one or more physical installation errors for the one or more hardware devices physically installed in the network; and deploying the network design over the one or more hardware devices physically installed in the network in response to validating that the actual physical topology discovered for the network corresponds to the physical topology in the topology specifications extracted from the network design, wherein deploying the network design over the one or more hardware devices physically installed in the network includes the one or more physically installed hardware devices automatically executing one or more commands issued from the computing device to automatically deploy the logical configuration in the network design over the one or more physically installed hardware devices.