Manage Environments managing-environments

Learn about the types of environments that you can create and how to create them for your Cloud Manager project.

Environment types environment-types

A user with the requisite permissions can create the following environment types (within the bounds of what is available to the specific tenant).

  • Production + Stage - The production and staging environments are available as a pair and are used for production and testing purposes, respectively. Conduct performance and security tests on stage environment. It has the same sizing as production.

  • Development - A development environment can be created for development and testing purposes and can be associated with non-production pipelines only. Development environments do not have the same sizing as stage and production, and should not be used to conduct performance and security tests.

  • Rapid Development - A rapid development environment (RDE) lets a developer swiftly deploy and review changes, minimizing the amount of time required to test features that are proven to work on a local development environment. See the rapid development environment documentation for details about how to use an RDE.

The capabilities of individual environments depend upon the solutions enabled in the program of the environment.

NOTE
Production and staging environments are only created as a pair. You cannot create only a staging or only a production environment.

Add an environment adding-environments

To add or edit an environment, a user must be a member of the Business Owner role.

  1. Log into Cloud Manager at my.cloudmanager.adobe.com and select the appropriate organization.

  2. On the My Programs console, click the program for which you want to add an environment.

  3. On the My Programs console, click Add Environment on the Environments card to add an environment.

    Environments card

    • The Add Environment option is also available on the Data icon Environments tab.

      Environments tab

    • The Add Environment option may be disabled due to lack of permissions or depending on the licensed resources.

  4. In the Add environment dialog box:

    • Select an environment type.

      • The number of available/used environments is displayed in parentheses behind the environment type name.
    • Provide an environment Name.

      • The environment name can not be changed once the environment is created.
    • Provide an environment Description.

    • If you are adding a Production + Stage environment, you must provide an environment name and description for both your production and staging environments.

    • Select a Primary region from the drop-down.

      • The primary region cannot be changed after creation.
      • Depending on your available entitlements, you may be able to configure multiple regions.

    Add environment dialog

  5. Click Save to add the specified environment.

The Overview screen now displays your new environment in the Environments card. You can now set up pipelines for your new environment.

Multiple publish regions multiple-regions

A user with the Business Owner role can configure production and staging environments to include up to three additional publish regions in addition to the primary region. Additional publish regions can improve availability. See the Additional Publish Regions documentation for more details.

TIP
You can use the Cloud Manager API to query a current list of available regions.

Add multiple publish regions to a new environment add-regions

When you add an environment, you can elect to configure additional regions in addition to the primary region.

  1. Select the Primary region.
    • The primary region cannot be changed after environment creation.
  2. Select the option Add additional publish regions and a new Additional publish regions option drop-down appears.
  3. In the Additional publish regions drop-down, select an extra region.
  4. The region selected is added below the drop-down to indicate its selection.
    • Select the X next to the selected region so you can de-select it.
  5. Select another region from the Additional publish regions drop-down to add another region.
  6. Select Save when you are ready to create your environment.

Selecting multiple regions

The selected regions apply to both production and staging environments.

If you do not specify any additional regions, you can do so later after the environments are created.

If you want to provision advanced networking for the program, it is recommended that this provisioning is done before adding additional publish regions to the environments by using the Cloud Manager API. Otherwise, the additional publish regions’ traffic goes through the primary region’s proxy.

Edit multiple publish regions edit-regions

If you did not specify any additional regions initially, you can do so after the environments are created if you have the necessary entitlements.

You can also remove additional publish regions. However you can only add or only remove regions in one transaction. If you must add one region and remove one region, first add, save your change, and then remove (or conversely).

  1. From the Program Overview console of your program, click the ellipsis button for your production environment and select Edit from the menu.

    Edit environment

  2. In the Edit Production Environment dialog, make the necessary changes to the additional publish regions.

    • Use the Additional publish regions drop-down to select additional regions.
    • Click the X next to selected additional publish regions to de-select them.

    Edit environment

  3. Select Save to save the changes.

Changes made to the production environment apply to both production and staging environments. Changes to multiple publish regions can only be edited in the production environment.

If you want to provision advanced networking for the program, it is recommended that this provisioning is done before adding additional publish regions to the environments. Otherwise the additional publish regions’ traffic goes through the primary region’s proxy.

Environment details viewing-environment

From the Overview page, you can access an environment’s detail in two ways.

  1. From the Overview page, click the Environments tab in the side navigation panel.

    Environments tab

    • Alternatively, click the Show All button on the Environments card to jump directly to the Environments tab.

      Show all option

  2. The Environments opens and lists all environments for the program.

    The environments tab

  3. Tap or click an environment in the list so you can reveal its details.

    Environment details

Alternatively, click the ellipsis button of the environment you want and then select View Details.

View environment details

NOTE
The Environments card only lists three environments. Click Show All as described previously to see all environments of the program.

Access the preview service access-preview-service

Cloud Manager provides a preview service (delivered as an extra publish service) to each AEM as a Cloud Service environment.

Using the service you can preview a website’s final experience before it reaches the actual publish environment and is available publicly.

On creation, the preview service has a default IP allowlist applied to it, labeled Preview Default [<envId>], which blocks all traffic to the preview service. Unapply the default IP allowlist from the preview service so you can enable access.

Preview service and its allow list

A user with requisite permissions must complete the following steps before sharing the preview service URL to ensure access to it.

  1. Create an appropriate IP allowlist, apply it to the preview service, and immediately unapply the Preview Default [<envId>] allowlist.

  2. Use the update IP Allow List workflow to remove the default IP and add IPs as appropriate. See Managing IP Allow Lists to learn more.

After access to preview service is unlocked, the lock icon in front of the preview service name is no longer displayed.

Once activated, you can publish content to the preview service by using the Manage Publication UI inside AEM. See Previewing Content for more details.

NOTE
Your environment must be on AEM version 2021.05.5368.20210529T101701Z or newer to use the preview service. Make sure that an update pipeline has successfully run on your environment so you can use the preview service.

Status of additional publish regions additional-region-status

If you have activated additional publish regions, you can check the status of these regions from the Environments card.

  1. On the Overview page, locate the Environments card.

  2. On the Environments card, the Status column will reflect if there are any issues with the configured additional publish regions. Click the Info icon for details of the regions.

    Additional publish regions status information on the Environments card

Alternatively you can access the same information from the Environments tab.

  1. On the Overview page, select the Environments tab.

  2. On the Environments tab, select the environment you want to query in the left navigation panel.

  3. Once an environment is selected:

    • The Environment Information table will show which regions are configured for the selected environment.
    • The Status column of the Environment Segments table will reflect if there are any issues with the configured additional publish regions. Hover over the status for details of any issue.

    Additional publish regions status information on the Environments tab

If there are any issues reported with additional publish regions:

  1. Be patient. Cloud Manager continuously tries to recover the region and it may become available at any time.
  2. If the problem persists after several hours, you can remove the additional publish region and re-add it (either the same region or another region) to trigger a complete deployment.

How long you wait for the system to recover on its own before taking additional action depends on the impact the failure of that region has to your systems.

In any case, traffic is always routed to the other closest region that is online. If you continue to see issues, contact Adobe Customer Care.

Update environments updating-dev-environment

As a cloud-native service, updates of your development, staging and production environments within production programs are automatically managed by Adobe.

However, updates to environments in sandbox programs are managed within the programs. When such an environment is not running the latest publicly available AEM version, the status on the Environments card on the Overview screen of the program shows Update Available.

Environment update status

Updates and pipelines updates-pipelines

Pipelines are the only way to deploy code to the environments of AEM as a Cloud Service. For this reason, each pipeline is associated with a particular AEM version.

If Cloud Manager detects that there is a newer version of AEM available than what was last deployed with the pipeline, it shows the Update Available status for the environment.

The process of updating is therefore a two-step process:

  1. Updating the pipeline with the latest AEM version
  2. Running the pipeline to deploy the new version of AEM to an environment

Update your environments updating-your-environments

NOTE
As of 2024, development instances and some sandbox programs are already automatically updated so there is no need to manage updates for them manually. As a result of this transition, the option to Update environment manually for development instances might not be available to some of your programs.

The Update option is available from the Environments card for some development environments and environments in sandbox programs by clicking the ellipsis button of the environment.

Update option from Environments card

This option is also available by clicking the Environments tab of the program and then selecting the ellipsis button of the environment.

Update option from Environments tab

A user with the Deployment Manager or Business Owner role can use this option to update the pipeline associated with this environment to the latest AEM version.

Once the pipeline version is updated to the latest publicly available AEM version, the user is prompted to run the associated pipeline to deploy the latest version to the environment.

Prompt to run pipeline to update environment

The Update option’s behavior varies depending on the configuration and current state of the program.

  • If the pipeline has already been updated, the Update option prompts the user to execute the pipeline.
  • If the pipeline is already being updated, the Update option informs the user that an update is already running.
  • If an appropriate pipeline does not exist, the Update option prompts the user to create one.

Delete development environments deleting-environment

A user with the Deployment Manager or Business Owner role is able to delete a development environment.

From the Overview screen of the program on the Environments card, click the ellipsis button of the development environment you want to delete.

The delete option

The delete option is also available from the Environments tab of the Overview window of the program. Click the ellipsis button of the environment and select Delete.

The delete option from the Environments tab

NOTE
  • Production and staging environments created in a production program cannot be deleted.
  • Production and staging environments in a sandbox program can be deleted.

Manage access managing-access

Select Manage Access from the ellipsis menu of the environment on the Environments card. You can navigate to the author instance directly and manage access for your environment.

Manage access option

TIP
See AEM as a Cloud Service Team and Product Profiles if you want to learn how AEM as a Cloud Service team and product profiles can grant and limit access to your licensed Adobe solutions.

Access the Developer console accessing-developer-console

Select Developer Console from the ellipsis menu of the environment on the Environments card. A new tab is opened in your browser with the log on page to the Developer Console.

Login to the Developer Console

Only a user with the Developer role has access to the Developer Console. However, for sandbox programs, any user with access to the sandbox program has access to Developer Console.

See Hibernating and De-hibernating Sandbox Environments for more details.

This option is also available from the Environment tab of the Overview window when clicking the ellipsis menu of an individual environment.

Login locally login-locally

Select Local Login from the ellipsis menu of the environment in the Environments card to log on locally to Adobe Experience Manager.

Login locally

Also, you can log on locally from the Environments tab of the Overview page.

Login locally from Environments tab

Manage custom domain names manage-cdn

Custom domain names are supported in Cloud Manager for Sites programs for both publish and preview services.

TIP
For more information, see Introduction to custom domain names.

Manage IP Allow Lists manage-ip-allow-lists

IP allowlists are supported in Cloud Manager for author, publish, and preview services for Sites programs.

To manage IP allowlists, navigate to the Environments tab of the Overview page of your program. Click an individual environment so you can manage its details.

Apply an IP Allow List apply-ip-allow-list

Applying an IP allowlist associates all IP ranges included in the definition of the allowlist with an author or publish service in an environment.

TIP
For more information, see Introduction to IP Allow Lists.
recommendation-more-help
fbcff2a9-b6fe-4574-b04a-21e75df764ab