Building a Rapid Development Environment (RDE) in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)
In today’s fast-paced digital world, speed and agility are essential. Developers need an environment where they can quickly experiment, test, and deploy without lengthy setup times. This is where a Rapid Development Environment (RDE) in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) becomes invaluable.
What Is an RDE in AEM?
A Rapid Development Environment (RDE) is a cloud-based instance of AEM designed for rapid feature development, testing, and validation. It is a key part of AEM as a Cloud Service (AEMaaCS) and provides a lightweight, developer-friendly setup that closely mirrors your production environment.
Unlike local SDK setups, an RDE can be provisioned instantly in the cloud, allowing developers to push code, content, and configurations in minutes.
Key Benefits of Using an RDE
- Instant Provisioning: RDEs are created within minutes, removing long setup times.
- Cloud Alignment: They replicate your AEM Cloud Service setup, ensuring consistent behavior between development, staging, and production environments.
- Team Collaboration: Multiple developers can use the same RDE instance to test shared features.
- Real Content Testing: RDEs allow you to test features with realistic content and user flows before merging to main branches.
- Faster Debugging: Logs, Sling consoles, and error reports are available instantly through AEM Cloud Manager, making debugging faster.
How an RDE Fits into the AEM Cloud Workflow
Here’s a simplified overview of how RDEs fit into your AEM Cloud Service workflow:
- Develop locally using the AEM SDK.
- Push changes to Git on a feature branch.
- Deploy the code to the RDE using Cloud Manager CLI or APIs.
- Test and validate features directly in the cloud.
- Once approved, merge the feature branch into the main branch to trigger a full deployment pipeline.
This process reduces iteration time dramatically, taking development cycles from hours or days to just minutes.
Setting Up an RDE
Follow these steps to create and use a Rapid Development Environment in AEM:
- Access AEM Cloud Manager: Go to your AEM Cloud Manager project.
- Provision the RDE: Under “Environments,” click Add Environment and select Rapid Development Environment.
- Install and Configure the AEM Cloud Manager CLI:
npm install -g @adobe/aio-cli
aio plugins:install @adobe/aio-cli-plugin-cloudmanager
- Deploy Code or Content: Deploy packages using the CLI command below:
aio cloudmanager:rde:deploy <PROGRAM_ID> <ENVIRONMENT_ID> --file <ZIP_FILE>
You can deploy complete code packages, OSGi bundles, or content packages directly to the RDE.
- Test and Debug: Use the AEM Developer Console and logs to verify deployments, troubleshoot issues, and monitor application behavior.
Best Practices for Using RDEs
- Keep your RDE clean: Reset or redeploy regularly to maintain stability.
- Automate deployments: Integrate RDE deployments into your CI/CD pipeline.
- Use separate RDEs for each team: Assign dedicated environments for isolated testing.
- Leverage Cloud Manager APIs: Automate repetitive tasks such as deployments and resets.
Real-World Example
Consider a marketing team preparing a new campaign component. A developer builds the component locally and deploys it to the RDE in minutes. Content authors then log in, test the new component with real content, and provide instant feedback. After validation, the developer merges the feature branch, and the change is deployed to staging and production — all in the same day.
This process allows for faster iteration, early feedback, and reduced production risk.
Conclusion
The Rapid Development Environment (RDE) in Adobe Experience Manager Cloud Service transforms how teams develop and test digital experiences. By providing instant provisioning, cloud consistency, and seamless collaboration, RDEs empower organizations to innovate faster and more efficiently.
If your team still relies solely on traditional development and staging pipelines, it’s time to adopt RDEs — the next step toward agile, cloud-native AEM development.
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