AEM as a Cloud Service


Adobe has recently launched AEM as a cloud service and is the most significant change that has happened to AEM ecosystem in the last few years. 

What is AEM as a Cloud Service ?

Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service is a new generation software-as-a-service for experience management by Adobe.

It’s based on the leading solution Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) and offers outstanding content management (CMS) capabilities and digital asset management (DAM) for marketing and communication teams. 

The solution has been entirely designed for the cloud and is scalable, secure, always available and up-to-date.

Limitations in AEMaaCS -

Although Adobe has incorporated most of the changes in the AEMaaCS (AEM as a Cloud Service) , there are still the list of features not supported in AEM as a Cloud Service.
  • Screens add-on 
  • Communities add-on
  • AEM Forms 
  • The Classic UI is no longer available in AEM as a Cloud Service
  • Developer Mode in Page Editor
How to setup AEM as a Cloud Service ?

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) can be run locally using the AEM as a Cloud Service SDK's Quickstart Jar. This allows developers to deploy to, and test custom code, configuration and content prior to committing it to source control, and deploying it to a AEM as a Cloud Service environment.

Prerequisites

  • Maven
  • Java
  • AEM SDK.
  • Docker Desktop

To setup AEMaaCS SDK, following are the steps to be followed:
1. Install Java :
AEM is a Java application and thus requires the Java 11 SDK  to support the development.
  • You can download and install the latest Java SDK 11 from Software Distribution Portal.
  • Set the same as a local environment variable under JAVA_HOME.
  • Verify the same by running the command:
    • Windows: java -version
    • macOS / Linux: java --version
2. Download the AEM as a Cloud Service SDK :
The AEM as a Cloud Service SDK, or AEM SDK, contains the Quickstart Jar used to run AEM Author and Publish locally for development, as well as the compatible version of the Dispatcher Tools.
To download the AEM as a Cloud Service SDK :
  • Navigate to the Software Distribution Portal and then to AEM as a Cloud Service tab.
  • Sort by Published Date in Descending order
  • Click on the latest AEM SDK result row
  • Review and accept the EULA, and tap the Download button.
Once it is downloaded, Extract the Quickstart Jar from the AEM SDK zip and ensure that the license.properties file is available.

Setup the local Author :
The local AEM Author Service provides developers with a local experience that digital marketers/content authors will share to create and manage content. AEM Author Service is designed both as an authoring and preview environment, allowing most validations of feature development can be performed against it, making it a vital element of the local development process. 
The steps to setup a local Author instance are as follows:
1. Create the folder author under your AEM cloud setup folder.
2. Copy the Quickstart Jar which we extracted before and rename it to aem-author-p4502.jar
3. Copy the license.properties file .
4. Start the local AEM Author server by executing java -jar aem-author-p4502.jar from the command line.
Provide the admin password as admin.
    

5. Now access the local AEM Author server at http://localhost:4502/ in the web browser.

Setup the local Publish :
The local AEM Publish Service provides developers with the local experience end-users of the AEM will have, such as browsing the Web site hosed on AEM. A local AEM Publish Service integrates with AEM SDK's Dispatcher and allows developers to smoke-test and fine-tune the final end-user facing experience. 
The steps to setup local publish instance are as follows:
1. Create the folder publish under your AEM cloud setup folder.
2. Copy the Quickstart Jar which we extracted before and rename it to aem-publish-p4503.jar
3. Copy the license.properties file .
4. Start the local AEM Publish server by executing java -jar aem-publish-p4503.jar from the command line.
Provide the admin password as admin.

5. Now access the local AEM Author server at http://localhost:4503/ in the web browser.

Setup the AEM Dispatcher :
When downloading and unzipping AEM as a Cloud Service SDK, you must have found aem-sdk-dispatcher-tools-2.0.27-windows.zip file. Extract the zip into the locally created dispatcher folder.
  • Setup Docker :
To start the AEM as a Cloud Service dispatcher, docker needs to be installed and run on the desktop. 
Also, we need not install Apache Server for this dispatcher to run like in previous version of AEM.
Download and install the latest version of Docker Desktop
Start the Docker Desktop before proceeding with the next steps.
  • Validate dispatcher configurations:
Validate the default dispatcher configurations, the default dispatcher configurations are available under the dispatcher folder created above:
          — dispatcher/src/conf.d 
          — dispatcher/src/conf.dispatcher.d
  • Create deployment/output folder:
Navigate to dispatcher/bin folder , open the command prompt and execute validator full -d C:\Users\Username\AEM Cloud-Setup\dispatcher\out ../src
Then, Deployment folder named out will be created in dispatcher folder to keep the generated dispatcher configurations for docker.
            
  • Start the dispatcher:
Navigate to dispatcher/bin folder , open the command prompt and execute:
docker_run.cmd C:\Users\Username\AEM Cloud-Setup\dispatcher\out host.docker.internal:4503 8080


           4503 — AEM Publisher port
           8080 — Dispatcher port
            
           Now the dispatcher is running on port 8080 and connected to AEM publisher on port 4503.

3. Setup the AEM Project:

Now when the setup of Author, Publish and Dispatcher has been done, it is time to test and run the content across the 3 channels.
For this a new project can be created or an existing project can be deployed.
  • Create a new project:
          The new project supported for AEM cloud service can be created by using the below Maven command :
           mvn -B archetype:generate 
          -D archetypeGroupId=com.adobe.aem
          -D archetypeArtifactId=aem-project-archetype 
          -D archetypeVersion=24
          -D aem-version=cloud 
          -D appTitle="MySite" 
          -D appId="mysite"
          -D groupId="com.mysite" 
          -D frontendModule=general 
          -D includeExamples=n

You can deploy the new project in author and publish by mvn clean install -PautoInstallPackage and -PautoInstallPackagePublish.

  • Setup existing AEM project ( WKND Project):
          You can download the sample WKND project from here:
          Once downloaded the zip file , install the same in the local author. 
          Now the WKND website is accessible through author— http://localhost:4502.
          Replicate the same to be available on the publisher — http://localhost:4503
         
         Once it is available on publisher, it can be accessed in the dispatcher also :
          http://localhost:8080/



This concludes the local setup of AEM as a Cloud Service in author and publish as well as the dispatcher setup. You can develop the changes in your author instance, test it and deploy in publish and dispatcher. 
The changes can then be deployed through Adobe Cloud Manager which will run CI/CD pipeline to ensure the quality of the code and deployment.


Comments

  1. Very useful article, helped in setting up dispatcher for AEM as a Cloud Service

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great Article! Everything consolidated & detailed for setup!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Best and Clear documentation on AEM as a cloud service.....Waiting for more Useful AEM Topics :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very informative and detailed one!

    ReplyDelete

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