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Why Use AEM
Leader in Gartner Quadrant in 2017, now 7 years in a row.
Architecture Components
| Component Front-End to Back | Purpose | Summary | Notes | Key Reading MatrialMaterial | ||||
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| Content Delivery Network | ||||||||
| Akamai | CDN (Content Distribution Network) | |||||||
| Content Management System | ||||||||
| Apache Web Server with Adobe Dispatcher Module | Web Server, Caching and Load Balancing | Caches into static content pages generated by CMS Publisher to improve performance and provides a layer of security protection. Requests from User stops at Dispatcher which initiates a cleaner request to the Publisher. The Adobe Dispatcher Module is proprietary Adobe software. | The Adobe Dispatcher module loads like any other Apache module but is closed source. Note that there are two versions (standard and SSL) with the same extracted name.
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| AEM Publisher | CMS Publisher | Assembles and serves the published content as static html. | ||||||
| Content Repository | CMS Database Cache | See Content. Repository further below AEM Instance for Author for details. | ||||||
| AEM Instance for Author | CMS Author | Create, upload and edit content and to administer the website. Powered as follows,
Has two user interfaces, old and new (add more to this later). | If possible, ensure only available within the Intranet. | |||||
| Content Repository | CMS Database | NoSQL File based data storage for content-centric applications, implementing Content Repository API for Java Technology (JCR 2.0). Uses Apache Jackrabbit as JCR implementation and Apache Jackrabbit Oak as module manager (searching, versioning, transactions, etc.) of repository with additional customization on top of Oak called CRX3 (Code Repository Extreme 3) to add features (synchronous updates, key-value persistence, clustering, static extension, individual workspace index). This finally communicates to a MK (MicroKernel). Default and recommended storage format is to use tar files TARMK (Tar Micro Kernel) which also offers Cold Standby to sync repositories. Alternative is MongoDB but not Adobe does not recommended except for specfic use cases. More details on selection further down in Technical Notes. Note Azure blob storage is not supported. AWS S3 is supported with Adobe's S3 Datastore Connector. | There are always limits to any type of file store, for example maximum number of files in a directory. Adobe is not clear on how the product deals with this. Planning should also be done around categories of assets, ie media, images and normal content. It especially becomes a problem when restoring.
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| DAM (Digital Asset Management System) | Management of Production ready Digital Assets | As best practice, the DAM connected to AEM should be used for production ready, not high fidelity digital assets. | ||||||
| Deep Content Management Technology Components | ||||||||
| TarMK | ||||||||
| Mongo | Sharding no longer supported. Only added as of 6.1. | |||||||
| Solr powered by Lucene | Native System Search Engine | Used by the native system to perform lookups and performs indexing. | ||||||
| Solr powered by Lucene | Site Search Engine | Bonsai Framework evaluation is to not use embedded and keep the CMS function purely to Authoring. Instead use an external Solr based search engine. | ||||||
| CMS Author Database | ||||||||
| Microsoft AD or Single Sign-On | Centralized Authentication Directory | In companies with effective identity onboarding it is strongly recommended to leverage. Out of the box, AEM's authentication does not meet minimal standards (enforcing password complexity, password recovery, etc...). | Optional and should fail back to local authentication repository if AD fails. Currently AEM does not support one-time email users. As such decision is to not use AD in a large org to quickly provision Business users in and out of the system. Confirm users deactivated do not take license seats | |||||
| CRXDE Lite | Adobe's web user interface to interface with Apache Sling. CRXDE Lite looks to be Adobe's own extension sitting on top of Apache Sling Web Console and Apache Felix Web Console. | |||||||
| Apache Felix | Implementation of OSGi Specification | Can redeploy code pieces without requiring a restart. Each bundle requires a unique name space. Manages service discovery and registry. | ||||||
| Apache Sling | Control to expose and access resources. | REST Architecture. | ||||||
| JCR | Object Oriented Database | |||||||
| JackRabbit | Handles multi version control with refresh function to handle real-time updates. | |||||||
| Microkernel | Provides an abstraction layer for the storage of content in JSON. | |||||||
| Vault | Extract out of TarMK for normal file system. | |||||||
| Jetty | Container | Ahhh... not super clear but in Error 404 starting up noticed it's powered by Jetty. | ||||||
| Granite | ||||||||
| Roy Fieldinghttp specifications, sling, JSOP Thesis | Senior Principal Scientist at Adobe Systems | Significant achievements include, HTTP Specifications (Principle Author), originator of the Representational State Transfer (REST), co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation. | ||||||
| David N | JCR | |||||||
Note to incorporate more clarity from this article in https://www.terrabeata.com/2015/03/aem-interview-questions-what-is-the-technology-stack-of-adobe-experience-manager/ Also more good stuff in this technical deep dive http://dev.day.com/content/ddc/en/gems/technical-deep-dive-of-the-aem-6-platform.html | ||||||||
| Site Search | ||||||||
| Solr powered by Lucene | Website Search | Used internally for DAM but also available as module for Customer facing website. | Keep distinct from CMS system for Customer facing website. Some products offer as a plugin, but only implement if outside of the CMS system for load and security purposes. | |||||
| Development - Author | ||||||||
| Kits | Samples, Tools and Commons | |||||||
Is the Adobe Dispatcher module what also receives cache expirey information from the Publisher?Adobe Experience Manager Shortlist of Project Documentation
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- AEM 6.2
- Apache 2.4.x
- Ubuntu Server LTS 64-bit (exact version should not matter)
Download
| Note |
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June 2017 - Downloads do not seem to work with Chrome. Have had success with Safari. |
No public downloads as far as I can tell. Log into Licensing Website. Click LICENSES and Downloads. Click Adobe Experience Mgr.
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You should see "Adobe Experience Mgr" but it says "No Serial Number Required". This is not true. Instead look for "AEM Standard" with Production Version "5.6" and you will see a serial number under the "Serial" column. Copy and paste into a standard text file for later.
AEM
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AEM package comes in is built using many of the same concepts endorsed in the Bonsai Framework, hence the entire system in initial download is a single file in two flavours,
- cq-quickstart-6.2.0.jar - executable to run as a Java process .which includes Jetty as an embedded container
- cq-quickstart-6.2.0.war - install in a container like Tomcat
Enable license by entering at startup or in license.properties file (preferred to automation).
By default the package starts up running both the author and publish components as one service. Enterprise configurations will want to segregate and this occurs with a file rename,
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cq-<instance-type>-p<port-number>.jar |
Change,
| Code Block | ||
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mv cq-quickstart-6.2.0.jar aem-author-4502.jar
mv jre.... java
/opt/aem/author/java/bin/java -XX:MaxPermSize=512M -Xms1024m -jar /opt/aem/author/aem-author-4502.jar -unpack
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM warning: ignoring option MaxPermSize=512M; support was removed in 8.0
Loading quickstart properties: default
Loading quickstart properties: instance
Setting properties from filename '/opt/aem/author/aem-author-4502.jar'
Option '-quickstart.server.port' set to '4502' from filename aem-author-4502.jar
Verbose mode - stdout/err not redirected to files, and stdin not closedResourceProvider paths=[/gui, /gui/default]
quickstart.build=0.0.0.0_0_0_6_2_.20160414
quickstart.properties not found, initial install
UpgradeUtil.handleInstallAndUpgrade has mode INSTALL
Saving build number in quickstart.properties
Upgrade: no files to restore from pre-upgrade backup
33 files extracted from jar file
Running chmod +x /opt/aem/author/crx-quickstart/bin/start
Running chmod +x /opt/aem/author/crx-quickstart/bin/stop
Running chmod +x /opt/aem/author/crx-quickstart/bin/status
Running chmod +x /opt/aem/author/crx-quickstart/bin/quickstart
Running chmod +x /opt/aem/author/crx-quickstart/opt/helpers/crx2oak.sh
Not starting the Quickstart server as the -unpack option is set
Quickstart files unpacked, server startup scripts can be found under /opt/aem/author/crx-quickstart
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Modify temporary directory,
| Code Block |
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CQ_JVM_OPTS # may modify in serverctl or start script |
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Next Steps
In a large organization you will also need to consider the following,
- Brochure and Onboarding - Key goal is to explain Explain what to expect and limitation enforced by your organization to be enterprise.
- Security - Restrictions to enforce
- Operations Runbook - DR procedures
- Author Development - ...
- Author Workflow - ...
- Author - ...
- Contributor - ...
- Subscriber - ...
- Get ready for Adobe 6.3 https://solutionpartners.adobe.com/home/news/2017/03/get_ready_for_adobe_.html
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AEM Good Bad and Ugly - Pretty good technology feature with description dump.
Amazon Offering of AEM as a Service - (to Read) Possible ideas of how we setup explain our service. p15, interesting points on dynamic conent ESI, page 15 mod_rewrite in Apache prevent request passing to Dispatcher module.