Acquia

Acquia is a cloud hosting platform specifically designed for Drupal applications, offering managed infrastructure, developer tools, and enterprise-grade security.

For general Acquia documentation, refer to the Acquia Documentation.

Integration

Vortex provides the following integration with Acquia:

Tasks

With Vortex, you can:

• Download a database from an Acquia environment for local development or CI
• Copy the database between Acquia environments (e.g., refresh staging from production)
• Copy files between environments to synchronize uploaded content
• Purge the Varnish cache to ensure visitors see fresh content

When running these tasks, your .env and .env.local files are used as the source for the application name and API credentials.

Deployment automation

When code is deployed, Vortex automatically:

1. Provisions the site - Runs database updates, imports configuration, clears caches
2. Purges edge cache - Clears the Varnish cache to serve fresh content
3. Sends notifications - Notifies configured channels about the deployment

This is implemented using Acquia Cloud Hooks - pre-configured scripts in the hooks/ directory that trigger on code deployments, code updates, and database copy operations.

Environment detection

Vortex automatically detects when running on Acquia and loads appropriate settings from web/sites/default/includes/providers/settings.acquia.php. This includes Acquia-specific configurations for caching, file paths, and environment variables.

Acquia settings file

By default, Vortex includes the Acquia-provided settings file from /var/www/site-php/{group}/{group}-settings.inc. You can override this path by setting the DRUPAL_ACQUIA_SETTINGS_FILE environment variable.

Temporary file path

Vortex configures the temporary file path (file_temp_path) with a three-tier priority:

1. Default: /tmp
2. Shared GFS mount: If DRUPAL_TMP_PATH_IS_SHARED is set, uses /mnt/gfs/{group}.{env}/tmp — a per-head mounted directory on Acquia's shared filesystem. This is useful for operations like bulk uploads that require a shared temporary directory across web heads. See Acquia temporary files documentation for details.
3. Explicit override: If DRUPAL_TMP_PATH is set, its value is used regardless of other settings.

Onboarding

Before you begin, ensure you have:

• An Acquia Cloud subscription with at least one application created
• Access to the Acquia Cloud API (API key and secret)
• SSH access configured for your Acquia environments

1. Configure environment variables

Add the following variables to your .env file:

Variable	Description
VORTEX_ACQUIA_APP_NAME	Your Acquia application name (machine name)
DRUPAL_ACQUIA_SETTINGS_FILE	Override the path to Acquia's settings .inc file (optional)
DRUPAL_TMP_PATH	Override the temporary file path (optional)
DRUPAL_TMP_PATH_IS_SHARED	Use Acquia's shared GFS mount for temporary files (optional)

For CI environments, configure these secrets in your CI provider (GitHub Actions or CircleCI):

Variable	Description
ACQUIA_KEY	Your Acquia Cloud API key
ACQUIA_SECRET	Your Acquia Cloud API secret

2. Configure Drush aliases (optional)

To run Drush commands on remote Acquia environments, download your Drush aliases from the Acquia Cloud UI. See Using Drush aliases for detailed instructions.

Routine Operations

Download database

Download a database backup from your Acquia environment for local development or CI builds:

ahoy download-db