---
title: "May I use the RA environment as a mirror for my Production environment?"
date: "2025-05-08T08:27:21+00:00"
summary: "Discover why Acquia's RA environment isn't suitable as a production mirror and how it's used for security updates."
image:
type: "article"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/help/68856-may-i-use-ra-environment-mirror-my-production-environment"
id: "f3ff53bf-fc24-48b1-a049-3e943516bd3c"
---

The [RA environment](/acquia-cms/ra/environment) is provided as a mechanism for Acquia’s RA team to deploy security-related updates in a semi-automated fashion for you to test. Acquia’s automation expects that no other any [customer code or database deployments will use that environment](/acquia-cms/ra/environment).

The majority of RA environments are on shared hardware, which other subscribers are using for testing their updates. To not overload the shared hardware, at any given time, we are working only with a limited number of subscribers on these servers.