Acquia Platform and Hosting: Acquia Cloud, Environments, Deployments, and Tooling
What the exam expects
Acquia Cloud questions test your mental model of the platform rather than Drupal internals. Know the environment tiers: a Dev environment, one or more Stage environments, and a Prod environment, each with its own database, code branch, and domains. Code moves through a Git-based artifact flow: you push to a branch, and a deployment builds that branch onto the environment's servers. Understand that the codebase is a Composer-managed Drupal project, and that the document root is typically docroot.
Pipelines and tooling
Acquia Cloud pipelines (formerly Cloud Hooks / BLT-era workflows) automate build, test, and deploy steps. Know the distinction between a build artifact and the source repository, and how Composer installs run during the build. Acquia CLI (acli) and the Cloud API let you script environment operations: pulling databases, copying files between environments, running drush commands remotely. Acquia Cloud IDE provides browser-based development. Acquia Site Factory is the multisite management product, distinct from single-site Cloud.
Configuration and data flow
A recurring theme is configuration management across environments. Code deploys do not import configuration automatically unless your pipeline does it; database and files are copied between environments on demand, and copying Prod down to Dev is standard practice for realistic testing. Know that environment-specific settings belong in settings.php overrides or Acquia's environment variables, not in exported config.
Worked rule of thumb
If a question asks how a config change reaches production, the safe answer is: export config locally, commit it with code, deploy the branch, then run drush config:import as part of the deployment. Never edit config directly in Prod.
Traps
- Assuming a code deploy also moves the database or files.
- Forgetting that each environment has its own database and domains.
- Confusing Site Factory multisite management with single-site Cloud environments.
- Believing settings.php values should be exported as configuration.