Cloud Platform Product Guide

1.1. Cloud Platform Management Console and API¶

Acquia will provide access to the Cloud Platform management console and API for authorized users, enabling Customer to view and manage Drupal applications on Cloud Platform. Customer will be responsible for granting and revoking user access to the management console and API.

1.2. Platform Monitoring Services¶

Acquia will monitor Platform availability for Customer production environments with standard monitoring checks performed on a regular interval. Such monitoring may exclude degradation resulting from Customer’s application. Acquia reserves the right to remove a Customer application from such monitoring in the event of a recurring problem(s) where Customer rejects the Acquia Support recommendation for remediation. Downtime incurred while Customer application(s) are out of monitoring will be excluded from service level policy Availability calculation.

1.3. Drupal Application Management Services¶

Acquia will provide the following services for the Customer’s Drupal application(s) on the Platform:

1.3.1. Source code repository service

Enables Customer’s developers to track and manage multiple versions of the application.

1.3.2. Build and deployment services

Enables Customer’s developers to build Drupal applications and copy code, data and files between environments.

1.3.3. Development environments

Drupal environments for development activities by Customer’s Cloud Platform users.

1.3.4. Staging environments

Drupal environments for content staging activities by Customer’s Cloud Platform users.

1.3.5. Production environments

Drupal environments for production deployment of Customer’s Drupal applications for use by Customer’s end users.

1.3.6. On-Demand Development Environments

Drupal environments for development use that can be created on demand by Customer’s Cloud Platform users.

1.4. Node.js Services¶

Cloud Platform provides application platform services for Node.js applications. Deploying Node.js applications on Cloud Platform requires that the Customer purchase a Node.js platform package along with their Cloud Platform Enterprise subscription.

1.4.1.

The Node.js Service has four main components:

1. Source code repository service: Enables developers to track and manage multiple versions of the application.
2. Automated build and deployment service: Deploys build artifacts to the development and production environments.
3. Node.js development environment: For development activities by Customer’s Cloud Platform users.
4. Node.js staging environment : For testing activities by Customer’s Cloud Platform users. This environment is not available for Classic Node.js customers.

5. Node.js production environment: For production deployment.

1.4.2.

The Node.js Service includes support for the services listed above and the underlying platform infrastructure. Support for Customer’s Node.js application code and any third-party dependencies deployed by the Customer is not included.

1.5. Drupal Application Support Services¶

Acquia will provide technical support as described in the Support Users Guide for Customer’s Drupal applications on the Platform during the Subscription Term as indicated in the Order.

1.6. Platform CDN Service¶

Acquia provides an integrated content delivery network (CDN) that customers may use to accelerate the delivery of web assets. The Platform CDN leverages global points of presence (POPs) to help customers deliver faster experiences, no matter where their users are located. Use of the Platform CDN requires customers to make authoritative DNS configuration changes to direct visitor requests to the Customer domain through the CDN. The CDN is managed by Acquia and does not support any custom configuration. Customers may control the caching behavior of the Platform CDN through HTTP Cache-Control headers and Drupal tag-based invalidation, and full purge of the CDN cache. The Platform CDN does not support the customer’s custom VCL configurations at the CDN or the Cloud Platform Varnish tiers, or “stacked” CDN implementations where a reverse proxy-based CDN or WAF service is configured in front of or behind the Platform CDN.

For all Cloud Platform customers who have elected to utilize the Platform CDN, the following Resource Limits policy will apply:

• Bandwidth: Monthly bandwidth usage on Platform CDN is limited to 200 GB. If a Customer exceeds this limit for two or more consecutive months, then that Customer must engage with an Acquia Account Manager to explore Acquia Edge CDN as an alternative solution to Platform CDN. Should Acquia Edge CDN fail to meet the needs of the customer, additional bandwidth may need to be purchased.
• Domains: Customers may configure up to ten (10) domains for the Platform CDN per subscription. If a Customer exceeds this limit for two or more consecutive months, then that Customer must engage with an Acquia Account Manager to explore Acquia Edge CDN as an alternative solution to Platform CDN. Should Acquia Edge CDN fail to meet the needs of the customer, additional domains may need to be purchased.
• SSL certificates: Customers may install up to ten (10) SSL certificates for the Platform CDN per subscription. If a Customer exceeds this limit for two or more consecutive months, then that Customer must engage with an Acquia Account Manager to explore Acquia Edge CDN as an alternative solution to Platform CDN. Should Acquia Edge CDN fail to meet the needs of the customer, additional certificates may need to be purchased.
• No usage: If a Customer enables the Platform CDN but does not make the DNS configuration changes required to direct visitor traffic through the CDN resulting in the Customer domain receiving no Platform CDN traffic for two or more consecutive months, Acquia will remove the Customer domain receiving no traffic from Platform CDN.

1.7. Data Centers¶

The Cloud Platform is physically remote from Acquia’s office facilities. A disaster affecting one or more of Acquia’s offices would not impact the availability of Customer website(s) or Customer Data. The Cloud Platform environment consists of major Regions and Availability Zones. Availability Zones are separate yet interconnected data centers within major Regions in Acquia’s global infrastructure. Cloud Platform uses a highly available redundant architecture that distributes replicated redundant server types (load balancing, caching, web and database servers) across multiple Availability Zones within the same Region. Acquia will use commercially reasonable efforts to restore the services in an alternate Availability Zone within the same Region (or alternate Region if Multi-Region Failover service has been purchased) in the event service in Customer’s assigned Availability Zone (or Region) is severely impacted.

1.8. Backups¶

Acquia will maintain a comprehensive backup solution which includes website code, static assets or files, and databases. Acquia will create Customer database backups one time per day and retain these backups for three days. Acquia will also provide Customer the ability to create on-demand database backups. During the Subscription Term, Acquia will retain these on-demand backups for Customer until Customer chooses to delete them. Backups will count against the storage space purchased in Customer’s Order. Customer may download these database backups and restore a previous backup on the backups tab of the Cloud Platform interface.

A version history of all changes to Customer’s Drupal code will be maintained in the source code repository service as described above.

Acquia conducts daily backups of each website file, which will be used in the event Acquia must restore the website due to a failure of the Service. Backups are retained daily over the previous week, weekly over the previous month, and monthly thereafter.

1.9. Disaster Recovery¶

The Cloud Platform will make hourly internal disaster recovery snapshots of Customer Data. Acquia will retain these snapshots on a diminishing schedule for three months. These backups will be used to restore Customer website(s) at another location within the same Region in the event of a total data center loss or a loss of multiple disk systems. Acquia will not provide Customer access to these snapshots and will not use these snapshots to restore websites due to data-loss or deletion by Customer.

2.1. Traffic Capacity¶

Each Cloud Platform subscription includes a traffic capacity entitlement to support traffic up to the number of monthly views and unique visits (each as defined below) specified in the applicable Order Form (per SKU) (collectively and individually “Traffic Limits”). Such traffic, both actual and capacity limits, shall be viewable in the Cloud Platform Management Console.

• View means a request that is made to the Customer’s application on the Acquia Platform, excluding static files (CSS, image, etc.)
• Unique Visit means one or more requests to the Customer’s application from the same client device within the same hour. Acquia will use industry-standard methods that may include headers or browser cookies to identify client applications.

Acquia may remove, where applicable and identifiable, at Acquia’s sole discretion, certain common types of bot traffic from the customer’s Views and Unique Visits calculation. Customer will be responsible for any Views and Unique Visits consumed by a Denial of Service attack. Should customers exceed their current limit by 20%, then they will be charged. Should Customer’s usage exceed their limit by less than 20% for a single month and subsequently usage is reduced below limit, Customer will not be charged for those overages.

Should the Customer exceed subscription limits by any amount for two consecutive months, then overages will be applicable at the stated rate. Customer will also have to pay the backdated amount. Acquia reserves the right to invoice the Customer at the end of each month if they are over 20% and have not responded to communications from Acquia or engaged with their account team directly. Fees for overages will be calculated and invoiced monthly in arrears at the then-current rate card.

If Customer exceeds subscription limit and is using New Relic Synthetics monitoring, the baseline Views per month required for application uptime monitoring will be excluded from the subscription usage calculations at a rate of 45,000 Views or 13,500 Visits per month for each application monitored by New Relic Synthetics, up to 10 applications per subscription.

2.2. Traffic Overages¶

If Customer’s actual usage exceeds the capacity entitlement purchased in the applicable Order Form, Acquia shall be entitled to invoice Customer, and Customer agrees to pay the applicable additional fees for such usage (“Overage Fees”) in accordance with the terms set forth in the Agreement. Unless otherwise specified in an applicable Order Form, any such Overage Fees shall be determined by the applicable fee schedule set forth in Acquia’s then current commercial price book. Should customers exceed their current limit by 20%, then they will be charged. Should Customer’s usage exceed the limit by less than 20% for a single month and subsequently the usage is reduced below limit, Customer will not be charged for those overages. Should customers exceed subscription limits by any amount for two consecutive months, then overages will be applicable at the stated rate. Customers will also have to pay the backdated amount. Acquia reserves the right to invoice customers at the end of each month if they are over 20% and have not responded to communications from Acquia or engaged with their account team directly. Fees for overages will be calculated and invoiced monthly in arrears at the then-current rate card.

Traffic associated with New Relic Synthetics usage as outlined in this document will only be taken into account upon receipt by Acquia of written confirmation from Customer that New Relic Synthetics was configured to monitor application uptime on one or more applications in the subscription during the period of elevated utilization.

2.2.1. Overage Forgiveness

Overage Forgiveness provides an overage forgiveness period during which Customer will not be invoiced for any Overage Fees resulting from monthly Views or Unique Visits exceeding Customer’s entitlement. Unless otherwise specified in an applicable Order Form, the Overage Forgiveness Period is defined as three (3) months from the beginning of production traffic in the initial term of a Cloud Platform Subscription Term (“Overage Forgiveness Period”), unless inaccurate information was provided to Acquia for sizing.

2.3. Resource Limits¶

Acquia reserves the right to enforce (i) per-View resource limits on Customer applications, which may include maximum memory (including any configurable memory allocations), CPU, data transfer/bandwidth, and/or IOPS and (ii) maximum use limits on Customer application background processes, which may include frequency of scheduled processes and resources per scheduled process, all as set forth in the product Documentation (each a “Resource Limit”).

For subscriptions with applications running on Cloud Next*, Resource Limits are defined as follows:

* For customers with applications running on Cloud Classic, Resource Limits are identical to those outlined in the preceding table with the exception of CCU. For CCU limits, Resource Limits are set at 1.8 times of the values in the preceding table. These CCU values provide customers with the same available resources to run their applications; higher values on ACC reflect architectural differences between Cloud Next and Cloud Classic configurations.

In this model, Cloud Capacity Units are calculated by Acquia based on CPU utilization, memory utilization, and data transfer within and between Cloud Platform infrastructure layers. A formulaic calculation of CCUs can be found in Cloud Platform FAQ.

Resource Limits can also be increased by purchasing Performance Boosts.

Resource Limits apply to all subscriptions, applications, and environments running on Cloud Next technologies. Stated limits may be higher for customers with increased entitlements otherwise formalized in Customer’s contract or Acquia’s Support Users Guide.

For Resource Limits not readily visible to Customer in the Cloud Platform user interface, Customer will not be held responsible for Resource Limits violations occurring before formal notification is sent to Customer by Acquia. Notifications will be sent when Acquia, during routine audits of Cloud Next platform utilization, becomes aware of excessive usage beyond Resource Limits. Upon receipt of notice, Customer will be provided with a 60 day window to reduce usage or else purchase a Performance Boost to increase Resource Limits.

2.4. Emergency Resource Limit Increase¶

In the event Acquia becomes aware that Customer’s application is exceeding its allocated Resource Limits as described in Section 2.3 above, Acquia will notify Customer and will take reasonable actions to increase such Resource Limits in an effort to maintain website availability. Customer agrees that Acquia, in its reasonable discretion, may unilaterally increase Resource Limits to the next standard size available, dynamically allocate additional temporary capacity, or else allocate a Performance Boost add-on, at Acquia’s then current rates. For applications running on Cloud Classic infrastructure, such additional Resource Limits will remain provisioned for the remainder of the Subscription Term, unless otherwise agreed. For applications running on Cloud Next infrastructure, additional Cloud Capacity allocated beyond Resource Limits guidelines may be removed or limited at any point in time. Customer agrees to pay for any such additional capacity for the remainder of the Term. Acquia reserves the right to not provision additional resources if Customer has any outstanding amounts due. Acquia reserves the right to remove Customer from monitoring in the event that a recommended or completed Resource Limit increase is refused or otherwise disputed by Customer. Downtime incurred while Customer instances are out of monitoring will be excluded from service level policy calculations.

2.5. Storage Capacity Limits¶

Each Cloud Platform subscription includes specified limits on Filesystem Storage and Database Storage resulting in an established “Storage Capacity Limit.” Customer may allocate this storage capacity to any application covered by the subscription. Database and file backups, excluding Disaster Recovery snapshots, will count toward Storage Capacity Limits.

2.6. Emergency Storage Capacity Increase¶

In the event Acquia becomes aware that Customer has reached, or may reach, its Storage Capacity Limit, Acquia will notify Customer and will take reasonable actions to increase the storage capacity in an effort to maintain website availability. Customer agrees that Acquia, in its reasonable discretion, can unilaterally increase storage to the next standard storage size available at Acquia’s then current daily rates. Such additional storage capacity will remain provisioned for the remainder of the applicable Subscription Term and Customer agrees to pay for such additional storage capacity for the remainder of such Subscription Term. Acquia reserves the right to not provision additional storage capacity if Customer has any outstanding accounts receivable due under its account.

3.1 Dedicated infrastructure at the edge layer¶

With the Enterprise Security Package, the Customer’s primary technology stack in Cloud Platform Enterprise is provisioned on unique, logically distinct infrastructure, including the edge layer. Dedicated infrastructure is free from other applications consuming server resources. For more information, see Shared or dedicated infrastructure.

3.2. Log Forwarding¶

Log Forwarding entitles Customer to securely forward logs from Cloud Platform to up to two remote destinations. Supported log file types and remote destinations are listed in the product documentation. Acquia reserves the right to remove access to Log Forwarding, in its sole and reasonable discretion, if Customer’s application generates excessive volumes of logs and Customer refuses to reduce logging. Customer is responsible for uptime and network connectivity of the remote destination.

3.3. IP Address allowlisting¶

IP Address allowlisting entitles the Customer to specify the IP addresses from which Customer’s application on Cloud Platform will accept inbound HTTPS traffic through a Custom Varnish ACL.

3.4 GeoIP integration¶

Customers with the Enterprise Security Package can enable GeoIP for their application. GeoIP entitles the Customer to identify the country of origin of HTTP requests, which can be used to diagnose issues arising from traffic spikes, help identify unusual access trends, or assist in crafting targeted content. For more information, see Using GeoIP information.

3.5 Ability to conduct Load testing on Cloud Platform¶

Customers with the Enterprise Security Package can conduct their own performance and vulnerability testing as required for their security requirements. Customers must notify Acquia Support prior to conducting testing. Acquia does not conduct this testing for the Customer. For guidelines and requirements about conducting testing on Cloud Platform, see Load testing on Cloud Platform.

3.6 Ability to modify the Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) file¶

Customers with the Enterprise Security Package can modify their VCL file by following the instructions at Custom Varnish configuration. Cloud Platform installs Varnish Cache, a caching reverse proxy, in front of all Cloud Platform load balancing infrastructure. To modify the behavior of Varnish, you must create a custom Varnish configuration using Varnish’s domain-specific programming language, VCL. Acquia does not test a Customer’s custom VCL file. Customers can purchase an engagement with Acquia Professional Services for assistance with their custom VCL implementation.