Notable Changes to Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service

AEM as a Cloud service - Whats different

There are notable differences between AEM Sites on premise or in Adobe Managed Service as compared to AEM Cloud Service.

1. /apps and /libs are immutable at runtime
• No changes in /libs are allowed at all.
• Overlays for areas in /libs that can be overlaid are still permitted within /apps.
• Static Template design information that is stored in /apps can’t be edited by way of the UI.
• MSM Blueprint and custom MSM roll-out configurations must be installed from Git by way of the CI/CD pipeline.
• I18n translation changes must come from Git by way of the CI/CD pipeline.
2. OSGi bundles and configurations must be treated as code
• New or updated OSGi bundles must be introduced through Git by way of the CI/CD pipeline.
• Changes to OSGi configurations can only come from Git by way of the CI/CD pipeline.
3. Changes to the publish repository are not allowed
   Aside from changes under the /home folder on the publish tier, direct changes to the publish repository are not allowed on AEM Cloud Service. In prior versions of on-premise AEM or AEM on AMS, code changes could be made directly to the publish repository. Some limitations can be mitigated in the following ways:
• For content and content-based configuration: make your changes on the Author instance and publish them.
• For code and configuration: make your changes in the GIT repository and run the CI/CD pipeline to roll them out.
4. Custom run modes are not allowed
   AEM as a Cloud Service does not allow using run modes to install content for specific environments or services. If a development environment must be seeded with data or HTML that is not in the staging or production environments, Package Manager can be used.
   The supported run mode configurations are:
• config (The default, applies to all AEM services)
• config.author (Applies to all AEM Author service)
• config.author.dev (Applies to AEM Dev Author service)
• config.author.rde (Applies to AEM RDE Author service)
• config.author.stage (Applies to AEM Staging Author service)
• config.author.prod (Applies to AEM Production Author service)
• config.publish (Applies to AEM Publish service)
• config.publish.dev (Applies to AEM Dev Publish service)
• config.publish.rde (Applies to AEM RDE Publish service)
• config.publish.stage (Applies to AEM Staging Publish service)
• config.publish.prod (Applies to AEM Production Publish service)
• config.dev (Applies to AEM Dev services)
• config.rde (Applies to RDE services)
• config.stage (Applies to AEM Staging services)
• config.prod (Applies to AEM Production services)
5. Removal of Replication Agents and related changes
   In AEM Cloud Service, content is published using Sling Content Distribution. The replication agents used in previous versions of AEM are no longer used or provided, which might impact the following areas of existing AEM Projects:
   
• Custom workflows that push content to replication agents of preview servers for example.
• Customization to replication agents to transform content.
• Using Reverse Replication to bring content from Publish back to Author.
  In addition, the pause and disable buttons are removed from the replication agent administration console.
6. Removal of Classic UI
7. Publish-Side Delivery
   HTTP acceleration including CDN and traffic management for Author and Publish services are provided by default in AEM Cloud Service.
   For projects transitioning from AMS or an on-premises installation, Adobe strongly recommends using the built-in CDN, because features within AEM Cloud Service are optimized for the CDN provided.
8. Asset Handling and Delivery
   Asset upload, processing, and download are optimized in Experience Manager Assets as a Cloud Service. AEM Assets is now more efficient, enables more scaling, and lets you upload and download at a faster rate. Also, it impacts the existing custom code and some operations. For a list of changes and for parity with Experience Manager 6.5 features, see the changes to Assets.