This page describes the scope of Remote Administration (RA) and includes the
following sections:
Subscribers may request Acquia perform website modification tasks, including
making minor and occasional functionality adjustments typically needed for an
operating website. The following Drupal administration tasks typically fall in
the scope of Standard Acquia RA services:
Acquia product support notes
RA has limitations regarding support for the following products:
- Site Factory subscribers: Site Factory
supports only standard RA services.
- BLT users: RA works directly in the Cloud Platform Git
repository. Any changes made by RA should be backported to external
repositories (e.g. those hosted outside Acquia on GitHub) to stay
inline with your project’s codebase.
Legacy Premium RA is available only to existing Premium RA subscribers.
Legacy Premium RA includes the following items:
- Manual security updates where an automated security update fails or
is not possible.
- Contributed module bug-fix updates (on request), limited to the same
major version release (for example: 7.x-3.1 to 7.x-3.3, but not
7.x-2.6 to 7.x-3.3).
- Contributed module recommendation, installation, and configuration.
- Creating and modifying views and content types (tasks must be
completable in less than one hour).
- Tuning website performance using the user interface (tasks must be
completable in less than one hour).
- Troubleshooting and manual configuration of a
composer.json file only
when required to successfully add security updates by automation.
Website modification tasks outside this scope of services can be handled by the
subscriber, through Acquia’s Professional Services (for
an added cost), or through an Acquia Partner. For any clarification on the scope of
services, contact Acquia Support for more
help.
Acquia’s Legacy Premium RA agreement provides for 10 hours of remote
administration activity per month, including any time required to deploy
security updates. Website modification tasks are limited to those completable in
the allotted RA service hours. Hours exceeding the maximum RA services
hours may be subject to excess usage fees.
RA subscriber requests can vary considerably. The difference between
administrative or maintenance tasks and larger tasks, such as new development
or project work, is not always clear. Acquia uses the following guidelines to
decide whether any single task is in the scope of services, from a time
required perspective:
| Estimated time to complete the task |
How Acquia will respond |
|---|
| An hour or less |
Acquia will complete the task as requested. |
| Between one and four hours |
Acquia will estimate the time required to complete the task, and request
subscriber approval to use the estimated RA hours to complete the task. |
| Greater than four hours |
Tasks estimated at greater than four hours are typically out of scope.
Acquia will recommend breaking the task into several tasks to be
handled over time, or Acquia will decide that the task is out of
scope and recommend the subscriber use internal or third-party resources
to complete the task. |
Acquia RA does not support websites, subscriptions, or applications which do
not meet our Requirements.
Certain website maintenance activities required to properly maintain a fully
functioning website fall outside the scope of RA Services and must be handled
by the subscriber. The subscriber is responsible for coordinating their
own internal resources, or engaging Acquia Professional Services for an
added cost or a third-party vendor to perform these tasks under a
separate arrangement. These tasks include, but are not limited to:
The RA automated update process may update Drupal Core to the next minor version
even if there is no security update. This is done to ensure that the core
version remains within scope for future automated updates.
If the RA automated update process fails to provide you with an update and
your Drupal Core version is older than one version behind the latest one, RA
cannot provide you with a manual update branch and may recommend a Professional
Services engagement.
- Acquia RA does not support the updates of modules that include version
jumps (such as upgrading the Services module from 7.x-3.18 to 9.x-4.0).
Major version upgrades are a development effort that is not in the scope of
RA. If such modules require updates, a Support Engineer will recommend a discussion with the Account
Management Team, who can discuss a Partner developer or Professional Services agreement.
- Acquia RA does not support core upgrades that include major version jumps.
This is a major development effort.
- Customizations and modifications are considered custom code, which is
out of the scope for RA. In addition, the Acquia update automation uses
Drush which overwrites customizations.
- Acquia recognizes that, at times, patches to core and contributed modules
are necessary. Ideally, such customizations and alterations should reside in
custom modules. While the RA team can provide limited troubleshooting
assistance, verification of patches and patched files are the responsibility
of the subscriber’s development team.
General policies about modifications:
- Modifications recommended by Acquia Support Engineers will be given limited
support, but must be correctly documented and patched.
- Modifications that are not correctly documented and patched will not be
supported.
- Modifications to address bugs which have a solution other than a patch will
not be supported.
- Core code which does not match the official release of the identical
version is considered custom code and is only supported at the discretion
of the Acquia RA team.
- Core modifications may be a part of various Drupal distributions, and as a
result, security update services and general RA services may be limited
or unavailable for websites built on these distributions.
Contributed modules whose code does not match the official release of the
identical version are considered custom code. The RA team only applies updates
to such modules at its discretion. Updating customized code may require a
significant development effort to be handled by your internal development
resources, through a separately contracted Acquia Partner, or through an
Acquia Professional Services engagement.
If you would like to update a modified module, a Support Engineer will
recommend a discussion with the Account Management team, who can discuss a
Partner developer or Professional Services agreement.
Custom modules are solely the responsibility of the subscriber. Acquia RA can
help troubleshoot issues that may arise from custom modules, and conflicts
between custom modules and core or contributed module updates. However, in
these instances, Acquia RA does not modify or fix custom code. If requested, a
Support Engineer will recommend a discussion
with the Account Management team, who can discuss a Partner developer or
Professional Services agreement.
- Acquia RA may not apply
.htaccess changes as part of a Drupal Core update.
- Subscribers are free to apply a custom fix on our update branch for
.htaccess.
Some module updates require that corresponding entity updates be made. You’ll
need developer assistance for Entity updates that cannot be applied by any of
the following methods:
- by Drush
- by updating a module to a newer version
- by applying a patch
- Significant changes to the design or architecture of the website(s)
- New website creation
- Data migration from other websites, systems, or versions of Drupal to the
website(s)
- In-depth performance or security analysis
- Content management, creation, or translation
- Graphic design
- Usability or accessibility testing
- Website load testing unless expressly included in an order
Note
Acquia will not configure, diagnose, administer, or repair:
- DNS or domain names
- Software not directly related to running Drupal
- Integrations (will diagnose up to the Drupal integration point)
The RA update process may not complete as expected due to the size of your Git
repository, databases, number of multisites or PHP memory requirements. In each
case, the Remote Administration Team will respond in one of the following ways:
- Large number of multisites
- RA will request a list of websites to update against.
- Memory limit errors
- For Composer websites, the Remote
Administration Team will review your
composer.json and
composer.lock files. RA will recommend reducing the scope of your
project versions.
- For drush-updated websites, RA will request a list of websites to update
against.
- Large Git repositories
- The Remote Administration Team will send documentation on reducing
your repository size.
- For Legacy Premium RA subscribers, the Remote Administration Team will
assist with reducing repository size with the understanding that the
repository history may not be saved.
- Large databases
- The Remote Administration Team will request a multisite with a smaller
database to update against.
- If possible, the RA Team will copy the database from another environment
to update against, and will request you set your preferences to not copy
the database during this process. Alternately, your team can manually copy
the database to the non-production environments.
- The Remote Administration Team can clear or truncate cache tables on the
production environment.
