PaaS only

Application modes

Last update: November 12, 2024

CREATED FOR:

  • Experienced
  • Admin
  • Developer

You can run the Commerce application in any of the following modes:

Mode nameDescriptionCloud support
defaultDeploy and run the Commerce application on a single server without changing settings. Not optimized for production.no
developerIdeal for development when extending or customizing the Commerce application.no
productionDeploy and run the Commerce application to a production system.Yes
maintenancePrevent access to a site while performing updates and configurations.Yes

See Set the operation mode to learn how to manually change the Adobe Commerce operation modes.

Cloud support

Because of the read-only filesystem, there is a strict restriction against changing the modes in remote cloud environments and it cannot be overridden by Adobe Commerce Support. Do not attempt to change modes by modifying the app/etc/env.php file because the ece-tools package overwrites the file based on multiple configuration sources.

Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure automatically runs the application in maintenance mode during a deployment, which takes your site offline until the deployment is complete. Otherwise, the application remains in production mode. See Deployment process in the Commerce on Cloud Infrastructure guide.

If you use Cloud Docker for Commerce as a development tool, you can deploy your cloud infrastructure project in a Docker environment in developer mode, but performance is slower because of additional file synchronization operations. See Deploy the Docker environment in the Cloud Docker for Commerce guide.

Default mode

The default mode enables you to deploy the Commerce application on a single server without changing any settings. However, default mode is not optimized for production because of the adverse performance impact of static files. Creating static files and caching them has a greater performance impact than generating them using the static files creation tool.

In default mode:

  • Exceptions are written to log files instead of display
  • Static view files are cached
  • Hides custom X-Magento-* HTTP request and response headers

Commerce operates in default mode if no other mode is specified.

Developer mode

The developer mode is recommended for extending and customizing the Commerce application. Static view files are not cached, but written to the pub/static directory on demand.

In developer mode:

  • Enables automatic code compilation and enhanced debugging
  • Uncaught exceptions display in the browser
  • System logging in var/report is verbose
  • An exception is thrown in the error handler, rather than being logged
  • An exception is thrown when an event subscriber cannot be invoked
  • Shows custom X-Magento-* HTTP request and response headers
NOTE
This mode is not supported in the Adobe Commerce Cloud environment and Adobe Commerce Support is unable to facilitate changing the application mode.

Production mode

The production mode is best for deploying the Commerce application on a production system. After optimizing the server environment, such as the database and web server, you should run the static view files deployment tool to write static view files to the pub/static directory. This improves performance by providing all necessary static files at deployment instead of forcing the Commerce application to dynamically locate and copy (materialize) static files on demand during run time.

Some fields, such as the Advanced and Developer system configuration sections in the Admin, are not available in production mode. For example, you cannot enable or disable cache types using the Admin. You can enable and disable cache types only using the command line.

In production mode:

  • Static view files are served from the cache only
  • Errors and exceptions are logged to the file system and are never displayed to the user
  • Some configuration fields in the Admin are not available