Basics

What servers and services are available on my deployed site?

Your Aptana Cloud site comes with Apache, MySQL, PHP, Postfix (SMTP).

Is Aptana Studio required to use the Aptana Cloud Service?

Studio is required to deploy and manage your Cloud sites, but we provide full SSH, SFTP, and SVN access to your site outside of Studio.

Do you have a control panel?

Yes! The My Cloud page inside Aptana Studio is a full-featured control panel that lets you view your site's status, statistics, events and notices, resize your service plan, add optional services, add team members and control the included services.

Why do I appear to have more disk space on my site than I expected?

Your service plan includes the allotted amount of usable storage; the extra you see is occupied by the software necessary to operate the Cloud and related services.

Does my site get a static IP address?

Yes, each Cloud site is assigned a static IP address.

What is the staging site's purpose?

This is a convenience, a separate URL where you can deploy test versions of your web application/site before updating the real/production version. You may, for instance, use HTTP Auth as a privacy mechanism to prevent the general public from reaching this version. Any storage space and RAM used by the Staging site do count towards your service plan limits, but if you choose not to use it the impact is negligible.

What are the rules for valid Aptana ID user names?

• Must be lowercase
• Must be at least 3 and no more than 16 characters long
• Must begin with a letter
• May only contain letters, digits, periods, hyphens and underscores
• Cannot contain the string ‘aptana’
• Must be unique across all usernames for the first 8 characters

Can I change my Aptana ID user name?

Not at this time, due to limitations in some of the software used.

Can I change/retrieve my Aptana ID password?

Yes, on http://id.aptana.com/reset_password

Server and Scripting

How is Apache configured on my site?

• Three VHOSTs are set up: Public, Private and Staging
• Your Cloud has a self-signed cert on the primary domain for using the svn+ssh protocol with your Subversion repository.
• Error pages are already set up, which you can override through directives in .htaccess
• Override All is set in httpd.conf so you can do normal customizations (e.g., mod_rewrite, block access for specified IPs, gzip compression) in .htaccess

Can I use SSL on my site?

Yes. Instructions for setting up SSL

How do I point a custom domain to my site?

That is, how do I point http://www.example.com to my http://myExample.aptanacloud.com?

Create an A or CNAME record in your DNS that points to your Cloud's IP address. The IP address is shown on your Cloud dashboard in Aptana Studio, right underneath the URL at the top of the My Cloud tab.

How do I create a symlink for index.html or index.php?

Many web developers prefer that index.html in the root of their site be a virtual file rather than a real one and use the *NIX facility called a symlink to implement this practice. Aptana Cloud supports this, here's how:

1. SSH in to your Cloud site—open a command/terminal window and type ssh <username>@<cloudname>.aptanacloud.com
2. Change to the public root directory: cd public/web/htdocs
3. Create the symlink: ln -s <real file name.html> index.html

  ssh myuser@mycloud.aptanacloud.com
    cd public/web/htdocs
    ln -s homepage.html index.html (HTML file)
    -- or --
    ln -s homepage.php index.php (PHP file)
  

What extensions and settings are compiled into PHP on my site?

Upload and run the following one line script to get the current PHP configuration and capabilities information:

  <?php phpinfo(); ?>
  

Cloud Activity

What applications/processes are using my site's RAM?

In addition to any memory that your web application or site may be consuming, the usual suspects will also be consuming some of your resources. These are mainly:

• Apache
• MySQL
• Jaxer (only if enabled)

Keep in mind that many processes do not release memory back to the OS until they are stopped. However, some of this memory will likely be swapped out of RAM if it is no longer being used, even if the process is still claiming it. When this happens, other processes will be able to use the newly available RAM, so it's not necessarily a bad thing if you are using most or even all of your RAM.

On Solaris, the operating system we currently use for Cloud, there is approximately one page of swap used for every page of RAM. This means you will see swap usage even if you are not using all of your RAM. Your zone is allocated twice as much swap space as RAM, so typically your application is not actively using swap until you see swap at 50% utilization or higher.

How do I start and stop services on my Cloud site?

On the Services tab on My Cloud in Aptana Studio (docs page) you can start, restart or stop Apache, Jaxer and Postfix and enable or disable Jaxer.

Do you offer backups?

Definitely! Our servers are highly reliable but we recognize the value of a good backup strategy. The Overview tab of My Cloud has a set of backup-related actions: Start Backup, Browse Backups and How to Restore.

Who has access to my private site?

Only yourself, any of your team members, as well as anybody with whom you share your personal credentials (although we recommend against such sharing).

What is the activity on my private site?

Outside of any activity that you may generate on your own private site, there will also be activity generated in your private subdomain for the charts and usage data shown in the Cloud Overview and Stats areas of Aptana Studio for your site. We also have some monitoring and health scripts that are run from your private subdomain, the primary one being the pulse service mentioned above.

This auto-generated activity should not have any significant impact on your site's performance or resource usage.

What is pulse and why does it run so frequently?

Pulse is a script that monitors the health of your Cloud site and alerts us to status changes so active measures may be taken in case of service problems. Pulse is also responsible for gathering some of the statistical information presented on the Cloud management page.

Database

What databases are present in my site's MySQL?

• SITE_NAME: Created by default for general-purpose usage. The real name of this database is the name of your Cloud site.
• DEFAULT: Only created if you're using Jaxer. Jaxer applications store their data in this database unless you configure applications otherwise in configApps.js or in application code.
• jaxer: Only created if you're using Jaxer, it's the database where the Jaxer framework stores its internal information.
• aptana_monitoring: Used by the Cloud pulse service, it holds the data used in the statistics tab of your Cloud management page.
• mysql: MySQL internal system database.
• information_schema: MySQL internal system database.

What database users are present in my site's MySQL server?

• root: Please do not change or delete this user. This user is required for proper operation of your site. It is only accessible from the site itself.
• app_user: This user is created for use in your web applications, and as the Jaxer default user when Jaxer is enabled on your site. This user only has access to the database from localhost, meaning you can't connect to the database from your computer using these credentials. Its credentials are visible to all team members on your site.
• Personal accounts: You also have access to the database with your personal credentials, as does every member of your team. Both admins and developers are given all privileges except that developers are not given the Grant privilege (the ability to create other users or change permissions).