Managing Cloud Platform servers¶

Each Cloud Platform environment runs on one or more server instances. The number and configuration of an environment’s servers depends on the level of the Acquia subscription the environment is part of.

Cloud Platform Enterprise: Environments run in a high-availability architecture, with two or more load balancers, web server nodes, and database server nodes for the Production environment.
Cloud Platform Professional: All environments run on a single server, which may be dedicated to one subscription, or may be shared with other subscriptions.
Cloud Platform Free: All environments run on a single server, which is shared with other Cloud Platform Free applications.

You can view information about your Cloud Platform server on the Applications > [Environment] > Servers page. For Cloud Platform Professional, you can also use this page to reboot, relaunch, resize, or suspend the server. For information about configuring the environments that run on the Cloud Platform servers, see Configuring an environment.

Viewing server information¶

The Servers page displays the following information about your servers (information may vary based on your subscription):

Name: The server’s name.
SSH address: The address used to SSH to the server (including its realm).
IP address: Displayed only if the server has an Elastic IP address.
Size: The current size of the server, including both ECU and RAM.
Region: The AWS region in which the server is located.
Web: Whether or not this is a web server, and if it is currently active or passive.
Database: Whether or not this server contains a database, and the database function (primary or secondary) of this server.
Balancer: Whether or not this server also is a web balancer.
Dedicated: Whether or not this is server is dedicated to this application, or if it is shared.
Memcache memory allocation: The amount of space (in MB) allocated to Memcached.

Server information

If you have several servers, you may want to limit which servers are displayed by Cloud Platform. To do this, you can clear the check boxes for Web, Database, or Balancer to hide servers with those functions.

Manage SSH credentials¶

To connect to a server with SSH, you need to register an SSH public key with your Acquia profile and have the necessary permissions. Click Manage SSH keys to open the Credentials section of your Acquia profile, and then add an SSH key.

Server graphs¶

Cloud Platform Professional customers can view their server’s graphs by clicking the Server graphs action icon. This link directs to the Stack Metrics page. Users can click directly on the Stack Metrics in the sidebar for this information as well.

Server size¶

The server size is the processing capacity (measured in ECU) and total memory (in GB).

Location¶

The server location is the AWS availability zone in which the server is located. This is set when you create your Acquia subscription.

Reboot, relaunch, resize, or suspend your server¶

On the Servers page, you can reboot, relaunch, resize, or suspend your server. You may also resize the server disk. This feature is available only to Cloud Platform Professional customers. Acquia manages any needed reboots or relaunches for Cloud Platform Enterprise applications, while Cloud Platform Free applications use shared servers that customers may not reboot, relaunch, or suspend.

How Cloud Platform handles non-persistent data with server relaunches or resizing

Log files - Historical logs are stored in a location on the server that is optimized for fast read/write activity. Although this works for actively and simultaneously updating multiple log files, the directory will not persist after a server is relaunched. Log files do persist when a server is rebooted, however. For this reason, to ensure that logs are stored permanently, copy your log files to permanent storage before relaunching your server. For more information, see Downloading historical logs directly from the server.
Host file changes - Acquia does not support changing a server’s hosts file.

Reboot, relaunch, resize, or suspend a server

Note

All provided times are estimates. These processes may take more time than the listed here due to server size or other factors.

Reboot¶

To reboot your server:

On the Servers page, click Reboot.
In the confirmation dialog, click Reboot server.

When you reboot your server, all applications on the server will be unavailable for about 5 minutes while the server reboots.

Relaunch¶

To relaunch your server:

On the Servers page, click Relaunch.
In the confirmation dialog, click Relaunch server.

When you relaunch your server, all applications on the server will be unavailable for 10 to 30 minutes while a new server is provisioned. You should not relaunch your server unless you have been instructed to by Acquia.

Resize¶

To resize your server:

On the Servers page, click Resize Server.
On the Resize server page, drag the slider to select the new size for your server. As you move the slider, the Price change field displays the increase or decrease in the monthly cost for the server.
Click Resize.

When you resize your server, all applications on the server will be unavailable for 10 to 30 minutes while a new server is provisioned.

To resize a server disk, see Managing disk storage space.

Suspend¶

To suspend your server:

On the Servers page, click the Suspend server link.
In the confirmation dialog, click the Suspend server button.

All applications on your server will be unavailable until you relaunch the server.

Memcached memory allocation¶

Memcached memory can be allocated and customized on a per-server basis. This setting affects all environments on that server.