The three-dimensional boxes represent nodes, either software or hardware. Physical nodes should be labeled with the stereotype device, to indicate that it's a physical device such as a computer or switch. Connections between nodes are represented with simple lines, and are assigned stereotypes such as RMI and message bus to indicate the type of connection.
Nodes can contain other nodes or software artifacts. The ApplicationServer node contains EJBContainer (a software node) which in turn contains three software components, a deployment specification, and a software artifact. The software components use the same notation as component diagrams. Deployment specifications are basically configuration files, such as an EJB deployment descriptor, which define how a node should operate. They are depicted as two-sectioned rectangles with the stereotype deployment spec, the top box indicates the name and the bottom box lists the deployment properties (if any) for the node. Software artifacts are shown with the visual stereotype of a page with a folded corner or with the textual stereotype artifact. In this case the software artifact is a fictional persistence framework purchased from AmbySoft (the vendor is indicated with a UML property string).