Notify external stakeholders or site visitors, if applicable.
Consider carrying out appropriate load testing in the weeks preceding the launch.
Document or establish incident response procedures.
In addition to the preceding best practices, follow the subsequent detailed checklist that can help you track the tasks you must complete to successfully launch an application on the Cloud Platform.
Configuring SSL
The following tasks are common requirements for building an application that supports SSL. These steps may or may not be required if you are using a CDN in front of your site on Acquia Cloud.
Task
Why
Documentation
Generate Certificate Signing Request (CSR)
A CSR is required to buy an SSL certificate. If you have already purchased an SSL certificate, you can skip this step.
Check rewrite rules are configured (using a contributed module or .htaccess file)
Your application’s .htaccess file controls how your website’s visitors can access your website and can be configured to handle many different visitor scenarios.
Set page cache maximum age to something greater than “no caching”
Varnish® won’t cache your standard page requests from Drupal if page cache maximum age isn’t set. This may cause severe strain on infrastructure, resulting in degraded performance and potential website downtime.
Notify external stakeholders or site visitors, if applicable.
Consider carrying out appropriate load testing in the weeks preceding the launch.
Document or establish incident response procedures.
In addition to the preceding best practices, follow the subsequent detailed checklist that can help you track the tasks you must complete to successfully launch an application on the Cloud Platform.
Configuring SSL
The following tasks are common requirements for building an application that supports SSL. These steps may or may not be required if you are using a CDN in front of your site on Acquia Cloud.
Task
Why
Documentation
Generate Certificate Signing Request (CSR)
A CSR is required to buy an SSL certificate. If you have already purchased an SSL certificate, you can skip this step.
Check rewrite rules are configured (using a contributed module or .htaccess file)
Your application’s .htaccess file controls how your website’s visitors can access your website and can be configured to handle many different visitor scenarios.
Set page cache maximum age to something greater than “no caching”
Varnish® won’t cache your standard page requests from Drupal if page cache maximum age isn’t set. This may cause severe strain on infrastructure, resulting in degraded performance and potential website downtime.
Don’t override the PHP memory limit on a global basis. Consider conditionally increasing memory limits for specific pages that need more memory
Acquia tunes its infrastructure to use the exact number of threads possible for 128 MB of PHP memory. If your application needs more memory for every page request, create a Support ticket. Conditionally overriding the memory limit for certain administration pages can sometimes be acceptable, but check with Acquia Support before adding this.
Dynamic Page Cache may increase the speed of your website, even for authenticated users. It’s the second line of defense after reverse-proxy caching (Varnish) and will keep user requests from overwhelming your website until the latter is warmed up.
Check for and Remove SQL queries and PHP logic or functions in templates
Going against the Drupal architecture can cause performance problems, such as SQL queries should not exist in Drupal templates such as node--xxx.tpl.php.
Back up Stage and Prod database
For recovery purposes. In the event of a disaster, you can quickly retrieve the most current version of your database.
Review areas of codebase using infrastructure-side device detection to confirm caching isn’t impacted or remove entirely
If the website is relying on infrastructure-side device detection for anonymous visitors, you may find pages are improperly caching for a single device.
Ensure directories don’t contain more than 2,500 files each
Website performance can severely degrade when too many files are added and available to the system in a single directory without any subdirectory structure.
Identify and remediate potential issues from having large image files
Image processing can be complex and can put a major hit on website resources (for example, memory). Underestimating the memory usage of these processes can have severe impacts on the responsiveness of your website.
Disable or adjust settings for modules and applications
Cloud Platform and security require permissions and installs to be built in a particular fashion. This can sometimes cause incompatibilities with Drupal contributed modules.
Switch from Drupal database search to Acquia Search
This can cause availability issues for websites in association with increased database activity, and is considered redundant and inferior to search backed by Acquia Search.
Enable caching on blocks, views, and panels where applicable
While Varnish cache will take a significant load off your website, Drupal-level granular caching can provide more performance benefits in many situations.
Disable default Drupal cron in favor of Acquia’s scheduled jobs
Compared to other cron solutions, using the Scheduled Jobs page is more reliable and provides extensive and integrated logging for Cloud Platform applications; disable the automatic cron module.
Disable unneeded modules (SimpleTest, Statistics, Devel, Mobile Tools) in Production
These modules can increase the website’s startup (bootstrap) overhead and are unnecessary in Production.
Disable user interface modules (views_ui and field_ui)
Can impose a small performance penalty when enabled, and can allow the essential views/fields required by your website to be modified.
https://Blocking unwanted traffic on your website
Identify and Block Nuisance Bots
Nuisance bots disrupt site analytics and create an impact on your infrastructure utilization. Block unwanted traffic with a WAF. Add such nuisance bots to .htaccess to keep unnecessary traffic at bay.
Don’t override the PHP memory limit on a global basis. Consider conditionally increasing memory limits for specific pages that need more memory
Acquia tunes its infrastructure to use the exact number of threads possible for 128 MB of PHP memory. If your application needs more memory for every page request, create a Support ticket. Conditionally overriding the memory limit for certain administration pages can sometimes be acceptable, but check with Acquia Support before adding this.
Dynamic Page Cache may increase the speed of your website, even for authenticated users. It’s the second line of defense after reverse-proxy caching (Varnish) and will keep user requests from overwhelming your website until the latter is warmed up.
Check for and Remove SQL queries and PHP logic or functions in templates
Going against the Drupal architecture can cause performance problems, such as SQL queries should not exist in Drupal templates such as node--xxx.tpl.php.
Back up Stage and Prod database
For recovery purposes. In the event of a disaster, you can quickly retrieve the most current version of your database.
Review areas of codebase using infrastructure-side device detection to confirm caching isn’t impacted or remove entirely
If the website is relying on infrastructure-side device detection for anonymous visitors, you may find pages are improperly caching for a single device.
Ensure directories don’t contain more than 2,500 files each
Website performance can severely degrade when too many files are added and available to the system in a single directory without any subdirectory structure.
Identify and remediate potential issues from having large image files
Image processing can be complex and can put a major hit on website resources (for example, memory). Underestimating the memory usage of these processes can have severe impacts on the responsiveness of your website.
Disable or adjust settings for modules and applications
Cloud Platform and security require permissions and installs to be built in a particular fashion. This can sometimes cause incompatibilities with Drupal contributed modules.
Switch from Drupal database search to Acquia Search
This can cause availability issues for websites in association with increased database activity, and is considered redundant and inferior to search backed by Acquia Search.
Enable caching on blocks, views, and panels where applicable
While Varnish cache will take a significant load off your website, Drupal-level granular caching can provide more performance benefits in many situations.
Disable default Drupal cron in favor of Acquia’s scheduled jobs
Compared to other cron solutions, using the Scheduled Jobs page is more reliable and provides extensive and integrated logging for Cloud Platform applications; disable the automatic cron module.
Disable unneeded modules (SimpleTest, Statistics, Devel, Mobile Tools) in Production
These modules can increase the website’s startup (bootstrap) overhead and are unnecessary in Production.
Disable user interface modules (views_ui and field_ui)
Can impose a small performance penalty when enabled, and can allow the essential views/fields required by your website to be modified.
https://Blocking unwanted traffic on your website
Identify and Block Nuisance Bots
Nuisance bots disrupt site analytics and create an impact on your infrastructure utilization. Block unwanted traffic with a WAF. Add such nuisance bots to .htaccess to keep unnecessary traffic at bay.
Cloud Platform