In Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), run modes are used to configure different environments for the AEM instance. The run modes determine the behavior of the AEM instance based on the environment it is running in.
AEM supports three different run modes, which are:
- Author: In this mode, the AEM instance acts as an authoring environment, where content authors can create, edit and manage content.
- Publish: In this mode, the AEM instance acts as a publishing environment, where content is published and made available to the public.
- Dispatcher: In this mode, the AEM instance acts as a reverse proxy server, which caches and delivers content to end-users from the Apache web server.
You can also define custom Run Modes based on your specific use cases or environments. For example, you might define a “Staging” mode for testing changes before publishing them to the live site.
Each Run Mode can have its own set of configurations, which are stored in the config.<runmode>.<name>.cfg file in the /crx-quickstart/conf/ directory. For example, the configuration file for the publish Run Mode would be config.publish.<name>.cfg.
To activate a Run Mode, you can add it as a system property when starting the AEM instance. For example, to activate the publish Run Mode, you would add the -Drunmode=publish option to the java command used to start the AEM instance.
You can also view the active Run Modes in the AEM Web Console by navigating to http://<host>:<port>/system/console/status-slingsettings. The active Run Modes are listed under the “Sling Settings” section.
Installation Run Modes
Installation Run Modes are used to specify the environment in which the AEM instance is running. You can set Installation Run Modes by setting the appropriate crx-quickstart/install/ folder for the AEM instance. This folder contains the installation specific files, like license, configuration files, etc. based on the installation run modes you want to set. For example, you can create a folder named install.author to specify that the instance is an author instance.
Custom Run Modes
Custom Run Modes allow you to define your own custom configurations for the AEM instance. You can create a custom run mode by adding a new folder with the run mode name in the /crx-quickstart/install/ directory. For example, you can create a folder named custom in the install directory, and add configuration files that are specific to this run mode. To activate this custom run mode, add the following system property to the JVM parameters of the AEM instance -Dsling.run.modes=custom.
To set a specific installation or custom run mode, follow these steps:
- Create a folder with the name of the desired run mode in the
/crx-quickstart/install/directory. - Add any configuration files or properties specific to this run mode to the new folder.
- Set the system property
-Dsling.run.modesto the name of the desired run mode when starting the AEM instance. - Restart the AEM instance to activate the new run mode.
Once the new run mode is activated, any configurations specific to that run mode will be used by the AEM instance. You can also check the active run modes in the AEM Web Console by navigating to http://<host>:<port>/system/console/status-slingsettings.
