Traditionally, a number of operational activities (such as deploying AEM packages, creating AEM package backups, and performing content checks across a number of tenants within an AEM environment) have been tedious and error prone.
A production release might involve someone deploying a multiple AEM packages one by one, where the person triggering the deployment process needs to be careful about the order of the packages being deployed, and often the person needs to manually check whether each package deployment has really been completed or not.
In order to solve the above problem, AEM AWS Stack Builder supports descriptor-based AEM activities. For example, instead of deploying AEM packages one by one, those packages can be listed in a descriptor file, and the descriptor-based deployment process will upload and install those packages in sequence, and it will also perform a number of status checks for each package.
AEM AWS Stack Builder currently supports three types of descriptor:
These descriptors will then be stored in S3 data bucket under the /<stack_prefix> path. For example, if the stack prefix is called some-stack
and the S3 data bucket is called some-bucket
, then the descriptor files will be stored at s3://some-bucket/some-stack/*.json
. The S3 data bucket name can be configured with s3.data_bucket_name
configuration property, while the stack prefix will be supplied as a Make argument during AEM environment creation time.
During blue-green deployment, the descriptors on the blue (live) environment are treated as a source state and will be copied over to the green (idle) environment. If the creation of the green environment doesn't include any new descriptors, then all descriptors from the blue environment will be used AS-IS. However, if there are new descriptors for the green environment, then these descriptors from green environment will overwrite the ones from the blue environment.
Deployment descriptor defines a list AEM packages and Dispatcher artifacts that should be deployed to a given component within an AEM environment.
Have a look at Deployment Descriptor Definition as a guide for creating your deployment descriptor.
Also check out the following examples:
- Deployment descriptor for AEM Consolidated architecture
- Deployment descriptor for AEM Full-Set architecture
- Create the Deployment Descriptor following the above guide and examples
- Place the descriptor at
stage/deploy-artifacts-descriptor.json
- Use Stack Manager Messenger with
deploy-artifacts-full-set
ordeploy-artifacts-full-set
target in order to trigger the deployment on demand - Alternatively, you can set configuration property
aem.enable_deploy_on_init
totrue
and the AEM packages and Dispatcher artifacts will be deployed during AEM environment creation. Note that this feature is currently only available for AEM Consolidated architecture.
Package Backup descriptor defines a list of AEM package backups along with the content filters for each of the package.
Have a look at Package Backup Descriptor Definition as a guide for creating your package backup descriptor.
Also check out the following examples:
- Package Backup descriptor for AEM Consolidated architecture
- Package Backup descriptor for AEM Full-Set architecture
- Create the Package Backup Descriptor following the above guide and examples
- Place the descriptor at
stage/export-backups-descriptor.json
- Use Stack Manager Messenger with
export-packages-full-set
orexport-packages-consolidated
target to export backup AEM packages on demand - For scheduled export backup, you can set the configuration properties
scheduled_jobs.author_primary.export.*
andscheduled_jobs.publish.export.*
to enable/disable it and to set the schedule when the export backup should run.
Content Health Check descriptor defines a list of content paths to be checked as an indicator for content healthiness.
Have a look at Content Health Check Descriptor Definition as a guide for creating your content health check descriptor.
Also check out the following examples:
- Content Health Check descriptor for AEM Consolidated architecture
- Content Health Check descriptor for AEM Full-Set architecture
- Create the Content Health Check Descriptor following the above guide and examples
- Place the descriptor at
stage/content-healthcheck-descriptor.json
- For scheduled content health check, you can set the configuration properties
scheduled_jobs.publish_dispatcher.content_health_check.*
to enable/disable it and to set the schedule when the check should run.