Deploying and Maintaining deploying-and-maintaining

In this page you find:

Once you have familiarized yourself with these basics, you can find in more advanced and detailed information in the following subpages:

Basic Concepts basic-concepts

What is AEM? what-is-aem

Adobe Experience Manager is a web-based client-server system for building, managing, and deploying commercial websites and related services. It combines several infrastructure-level and application-level functions into a single integrated package.

At the infrastructure level AEM provides the following:

Building on this base, AEM also offers several application-level features for the management of:

Finally, customers can use these infrastructure and application-level building blocks to create customized solutions by building applications of their own.

The AEM server is Java-based and runs on most operating systems that support that platform. All client interaction with AEM is done through a web browser.

Typical Deployment Scenarios typical-deployment-scenarios

In AEM terminology, an “instance” is a copy of AEM running on a server. AEM installations usually involve at least two instances, typically running on separate computers:

These instances are identical in terms of installed software. They are differentiated by configuration only. In addition, most installations use a Dispatcher:

There are many advanced options and elaborations of this setup, but the basic pattern of author, publish and Dispatcher is at the core of most deployments. Let’s begin by focusing on a simple setup. Discussions of advanced deployment options follow.

The following sections describe both the scenarios:

On-premise on-premise

You can install AEM on servers in your Corporate environment. Typical installation instances include: Development, Testing, and Publishing environments. See Getting Started for basic details on how to get the AEM software to install it locally.

To learn more about the typical on-premises deployments, see Recommended Deployments.

Managed Services using Cloud Manager managed-services-using-cloud-manager

AEM Managed Services is a complete solution for Digital Experience management. It provides benefits of experience delivery solution in the cloud while retaining all the control, security, and customization benefits of an on-premise deployment. AEM Managed Services enables customers to launch faster by deploying on the cloud and also by leaning on the best practices and support from Adobe. Organizations and business users can engage customers in minimal time, drive market share, and focus on creating innovative marketing campaigns while reducing the burden on IT.

With AEM Managed Services customers can realize the following benefits:

Faster Time to Market: With flexible cloud infrastructure of Adobe Managed Services, organizations can rapidly plan, launch, and optimize successful digital experiences. Adobe manages the cloud architecture with no additional capital, hardware, or software required and Adobe’s Customer Solutions Engineers, help with AEM architecture, provisioning, customization for connecting to back-end apps and go-live best practices.

Higher Performance: Provides reliable digital experiences for your business with four service availability options 99.5%, 99.9%, 99.95%, and 99.99%. Also, it allows automatic backup and multimode disaster recovery models to help ensure reliability and contingency management.

Optimized IT Costs: Proactive guidance and expertise help organizations stay current on the latest version of AEM. Adobe Platinum Maintenance and Support is automatically included in new deployments of AMS Enterprise/Basic, offering technical expertise, and operational experience to help organizations maintain their mission-critical applications. Free basic Analytics or Target capabilities offer additional value especially for mid-market organizations with limited needs for analytics and personalization.

Highest Security: Ensures enterprise-grade physical, network, and data security by hosting customer applications in a restricted-access facility, behind firewall systems, or inside a virtual private cloud. It includes single-tenant virtual machines with robust data storage encryption, antivirals, and data isolation.

Cloud Manager: Cloud Manager, part of the Adobe Experience Manager Managed Services offering is a self-service portal that further enables organizations to self-manage Adobe Experience Manager in the cloud. It includes a state-of-the-art continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline that lets IT teams and implementation partners speed the delivery of customizations or updates without compromising performance or security. Cloud Manager is only available for Adobe Managed Service customers.

To learn more about Cloud Manger and its resources, see Cloud Manager User Guide.

Getting Started getting-started

Prerequisites prerequisites

While production instances are run on dedicated machines running an officially supported OS (see Technical Requirements), the Experience Manager server will actually run on any system that supports Java™ Standard Edition 8.

For purposes of familiarization and for developing on AEM, it is common to use an instance installed on your local machine running Apple OS X or desktop versions of Microsoft® Windows or Linux®.

On the client-side, AEM works with all modern browsers (Microsoft® Edge, Internet Explorer 11, **Chrome 51+ **, **Firefox **47+, Safari 8+) on both desktop and tablet operating systems. See Supported Client Platforms for details.

Getting the Software getting-the-software

Customers with a valid maintenance and support contract should have received a mail notification with a code and be able to download AEM from the Adobe Licensing Website. Business partners can request download access from spphelp@adobe.com.

The AEM software package is available in two forms:

In the following section we describe the standalone installation. For details on installing AEM in an application server see Application Server Install.

Default Local Install default-local-install

AEM takes a few minutes to unpack the jar file, install itself, and start up. The above procedure results in:

To access the instance, point your browser to:

https://localhost:4502

The result in author instance will be automatically configured to connect to a publish instance on localhost:4503.

Author and Publish Installs author-and-publish-installs

The default install (an author instance on localhost:4502) can be changed simply by renaming the jar file before launching it for the first time. The naming pattern is:

cq-<instance-type>-p<port-number>.jar

For example, renaming the file to

cq-author-p4502.jar

And launching it, results in an author instance running on localhost:4502.

Similarly, renaming and launching the file

cq-publish-p4503.jar

Results in a publish instance running on localhost:4503.

You would install these two instances in, for example

<aem-install>/authorand

<aem-install>/publish

For more details on customizing your installation see the following:

Unpacked Install Directory unpacked-install-directory

When the quickstart jar is launched for the first time, it unpacks itself into the same directory under a new subdirectory called crx-quickstart. You should have the following:

<aem-install>/
    license.properties
    cq-quickstart-6.5.0.jar
    crx-quickstart/
        app/
        bin/
        conf/
        launchpad/
        logs/
        metrics/
        monitoring/
        opt/
        repository/
        threaddumps/
        eula-de_DE.html
        eula-en_US.html
        eula-fr_FR.html
        eula-ja_JP.html
        readme.txt

If the instance was installed from the UI, a browser window opens automatically, and a desktop application window also opens displaying the host and port of the instance and an on/off switch:

Starting and Stopping starting-and-stopping

Once AEM has unpacked itself and started up for the first time, double-clicking the jar file in the install directory simply starts the instance, it does not reinstall it.

To stop the instance from the GUI, click the on/off switch on the desktop application window.

You can also stop and start AEM from the command line. Assuming you have already installed the instance for the first time, the command-line scripts are here:

<aem-install>/crx-quickstart/bin/

This folder contains the following UNIX® bash shell scripts:

There are also equivalent bat files for Windows. For more detailed information, see:

AEM starts and automatically redirects your web browser to the appropriate page, usually the login page; for example:

https://localhost:4502/

After you are logged in, you have access to AEM. For more information, depending on your role, see the following:

Advanced Deployment advanced-deployment

The above section should give you a good understanding of the basics of AEM installation. However, installing a full production system of AEM can involve considerably more complexity. For full coverage of advanced installation see the following subpages: