Study Guide

General Overview of Cloud Platform

This video will provide an overview of the Cloud Platform user interface. The resources within each domain will help you investigate each topic in more depth.

• Acquia Cloud Platform Onboarding: UI Walkthrough

Study Guide by Domain

Domain 1.0: Fundamental Web Hosting Concepts

1.1 Demonstrate knowledge of basic web hosting architecture

A Cloud Pro understands basic website hosting architecture.

Resource:

• Cloud Platform architecture and key concepts

• Acquia Cloud Platform

• Acquia Cloud Platform API

1.2 Demonstrate knowledge of Drupal development workflows

A Cloud Pro should know how to set up workflows for Drupal development on Cloud Platform that follow best practices, avoid regression issues, and maintain secure code.

Resources:

• Working with code

• Code workflows with Cloud Platform

• Acquia require line

• Rolling back production deploys

1.3 Demonstrate knowledge of key security and performance concepts

A Cloud Pro should know about basic security and performance concepts in Drupal and Cloud Platform, as well as how to identify when an application does not conform to best practices.

Resources:

• Security and compliance

• Best practices for a fully SSL-protected site

• SSL and HTTPS

Domain 2.0: Cloud Platform Features and Interface

2.1 Demonstrate understanding of key features of Cloud Platform

A Cloud Pro understands the key features and user interface of Cloud Platform, including basic service levels of Cloud Platform Professional and Cloud Platform Enterprise.

Resources:

• Key concepts in Cloud Platform

• Comparing Cloud Platform Professional and Cloud Platform Enterprise

• Cloud Platform CD

• Managing Applications on Cloud Platform

2.2 Demonstrate ability to configure various aspects of an environment

A Cloud Pro should be able to configure an environment appropriate for team development of an application, including modifying PHP settings, entering Sendmail path for an application, and enabling or disabling Varnish over SSL.

Resource:

• Configuring an environment

• Monitoring your application and infrastructure

2.3 Demonstrate ability to configure teams and users

A Cloud Pro should be able to set up a team and its users within Cloud Platform, including assignment of roles, creating custom roles, and administering permissions. Also included is the management of an Organization within Cloud Platform.

Resources:

• Managing team members

• Working with roles and permissions

• Default Cloud Platform user permissions

• Creating a custom role

• Working with organizations

• Controlling access to Cloud Platform

Domain 3.0: Drupal Development workflow on Cloud Platform

3.1 Demonstrate ability to install a new Drupal site on Cloud Platform

A Cloud Pro should be able to install a new Drupal site on Cloud Platform by creating a new application, importing an existing application, or installing a Drupal distribution.

Resources:

• Creating a new application on Cloud Platform

• Installing a Drupal distribution

• Importing an existing application

• Acquia BLT

3.2 Demonstrate ability to set up a local development environment for working with Cloud Platform

A Cloud Pro will be able to set up a local development environment.

Resources:

• Acquia Dev Desktop

• Getting started with Acquia Dev Desktop

• Deploying an Application to Acquia Cloud Using Acquia Dev Desktop

• Deploying an Application to Acquia Cloud using GIT/SQL-dump

• Deploying an Application to Acquia Cloud using BLT/Drupal 8

• Acquia Pipelines

3.3 Demonstrate ability to deploy code, database, and files to various environments

A Cloud Pro will be able to deploy code, database, and files to various environments on Cloud Platform, using a workflow that follows best practices.

Resources:

• Working with code

• Code workflows with Cloud Platform

• Working with files

• Backing up your Drupal file system

• rsyncing files on Cloud Platform

• Using Production mode to protect your live application

• Acquia require line

3.4 Demonstrate ability to manage Drupal site configurations across various environments

A Cloud Pro will be able to manage site configurations for a Drupal application across environments.

Resources:

• Configuring your environments

• Managing applications using the command line

• Enabling SSL

• Custom VCL engagements

• Developing with the Cloud API

3.5 Demonstrate ability to use Cloud API for workflow automation

A Cloud Pro will be able to use the Acquia Cloud Platform API to automate workflows for development, authentication, drush and cloud hooks.

Resources:

• Cloud API authentication

• Drush Cloud reference

• Automating with Cloud Hooks

  • Acquia Cloud Hooks

  • Using Cloud Hooks on Acquia Cloud Hosting

Domain 4.0: Cloud Platform Best Practices

4.1 Demonstrate understanding of best practices for performance enhancement

A Cloud Pro will understand best practices for performance enhancement of Drupal applications, including basic application performance, Drupal performance, and maintaining the required level of performance for your application.

Resources:

• Improving application performance

• Using Fast 404 to improve Drupal performance

4.2 Demonstrate understanding of security best practices

A Cloud Pro will understand security best practices related to access control, managing team members and permissions, and whitelisting.

Resources:

• Controlling access to Cloud Platform

• Managing users, teams, roles, and permissions

• Managing security settings

• Enforcing password strength

• Setting up two-step verification

• Using two-step verification with your Acquia user account

• Securing your application with IP address whitelisting

4.3 Demonstrate understanding of best practices for Live Deployment

A Cloud Pro will understand the best practices related to live deployment, including basic tools, live code changes, and workflow.

Resources:

• Managing your code with other tools

• Using Live Development mode to change code on your server

• Live Development workflow

Additional Resources

The following are additional resources provided for your supplemental learning and practice.

Cloud Platform infrastructure

The Cloud Platform architecture and key concepts section of the Cloud Platform documentation describes how Cloud Platform works, including information about Cloud Platform's architecture, security, high availability features, and compliance with standards and regulations.

As indicated in the two diagrams below, there are four main components for both Cloud Platform Enterprise and Cloud Platform Professional applications:

• Reverse proxy caching and load balancing servers - Varnish/nginx

• Web servers - Apache with PHP and Drupal code

• Database servers - MySQL (Percona)

• Network file system - (GlusterFS)

The exact configuration of an Cloud Platform application's infrastructure depends on several factors, including whether the application is part of Cloud Platform Enterprise or Cloud Platform Professional.

Cloud Platform Enterprise infrastructure diagram

Here is a diagram of an Cloud Platform Enterprise application and how the components interact with one another for different user profiles:

Cloud Platform Professional infrastructure diagram

As a comparison, the following is an example of an Cloud Platform Professional application, and its component interactions:

Acquia Site Factory infrastructure diagram

The Acquia Site Factory and Cloud Platform section of the Cloud Platform documentation describes the supported and included features of Acquia Site Factory, which is built upon Cloud Platform Enterprise.

The following diagram describes the infrastructure used for the Cloud Platform Site Factory application, and how its components interact with one another:

Cloud Platform videos in Acquia Academy

• Cloud Platform Hands-On Demonstration

• Cloud Platform Onboarding: Learning Plan

• Cloud Platform Onboarding: UI Walkthrough

Caching and Varnish

• Configuring Drupal cache settings for Varnish

• How Drupal page cache works

• Caching overview

• Views caching

• Using Varnish

• Introduction to Varnish

• Bypassing the Varnish cache

• Purging Varnish cache on Cloud Platform

• Simplified VCL for Varnish

• Set max-age headers for specific pages, files, or paths

• Custom Varnish configuration (VCL) for Cloud Platform Enterprise applications

• Installing Acquia Purge

Learn more about the Acquia Certification Program at https://acquia.com/certification.