WHITEBOARD / WHITEBOARD FIELDCRAFT
Whiteboard fieldcraft
The board is what you are delivering. Each of the four boards in this guide can be drawn in under five minutes, and each ends with one rule written at the bottom that the customer can take away.
This page is drawn from https://fly.io/docs/reference/fly-proxy/, https://fly.io/docs/blueprints/resilient-apps-multiple-machines/ and https://fly.io/docs/reference/regions/.
Ask, draw, validate
- Ask three questions before you pick up a marker. What runs today, and where? Where are the users, and where is the data? What happens to the business if one server disappears? That last one matters because “Each Machine runs on a single physical host” and does not move on its own if the host fails (https://fly.io/docs/blueprints/resilient-apps-multiple-machines/).
- Draw from the left. Users start on the left, the Fly.io edge sits in the middle, and Machines on the right, so arrows flow the way a request does (https://fly.io/docs/reference/fly-proxy/).
- Say what you are drawing as you draw it. Every box gets one spoken sentence. The Say: lines on each board are written for that.
- Validate at every step. After each big arrow, ask “Is that right for you?” and fix the board on the spot.
- Write the rule at the bottom, for example a volume lives on one server, so run two (https://fly.io/docs/volumes/overview/)
Shared shapes and colors
| Shape | Means |
|---|---|
| Rounded rectangle | Fly.io edge or Fly Proxy |
| Square | A Machine (write its size and region code) |
| Dashed rectangle | A region (write the three-letter code, such as iad) |
| Cylinder | A volume or external data |
| Green arrow | Allowed path (HTTPS through Fly Proxy, 6PN private traffic) |
| Red arrow | Failure or blocked path (a lost host, a cross-region hop that costs money) |
Regions use three-letter codes; the current list is in https://fly.io/docs/reference/regions/ (17 listed on 2026-11-04).
The four boards
- Request path. A browser request reaching a stopped Machine through Fly Proxy, autostart and
fly-replay. - Stateful app. Volumes, snapshots, replicas and what survives a host loss.
- Multi-region. Regions,
fly-replay, read replicas and what going global really costs. - Teams and enterprise. Roles, SSO, support tiers and compliance, drawn as an org chart.
Sources for the boards
Every claim on these boards links to a Fly.io docs page, a Fly.io blog post or a live fly.io page, listed in the text. When you are not sure, stop drawing and open the page: https://fly.io/docs/machines/overview/.