Environment Management

Environment Management with Acquia CLI

Use when:

• Creating or deleting Continuous Delivery Environments (CDEs)
• Making one environment identical to another (mirroring)
• Copying cron tasks between environments
• Installing SSL certificates
• Listing or inspecting environments
• Deploying code to an environment

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List Environments

acli api:applications:environment-list

Shows all environments for an application (prod, staging, dev, and any CDEs).

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Get Environment Details

acli env:info

Shows PHP version, database, last deployment, URLs, and status for the selected environment.

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Create a Continuous Delivery Environment (CDE)

CDEs are on-demand environments — useful for testing feature branches before merging.

acli env:create "My Feature Branch" feature/my-branch

Arguments:

• label (required) — Human-readable name for the new environment
• branch (optional) — The git branch to deploy; prompts if omitted

# Interactive (prompts for branch)
acli env:create "QA Review"

# Non-interactive
acli env:create "Sprint 42 Demo" release/sprint-42

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Delete a CDE

acli env:delete

Prompts you to select the environment to delete. Only CDEs can be deleted; production and standard environments cannot.

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Deploy Code to an Environment

acli api:environments:code-switch  

Example:

acli api:environments:code-switch 112927-9454a2b1-cce0-475e-ae5f-5374dbca9b0a master

Returns a notification UUID you can track with acli app:task-wait .

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Mirror an Environment

Makes a destination environment identical to a source — copies code, database, files, and config.

acli env:mirror  

Use environment aliases in the format app-name.env:

acli env:mirror myapp.prod myapp.staging

Skip specific components:

acli env:mirror myapp.prod myapp.staging \
  --no-code \      # -c: skip code
  --no-databases \ # -d: skip databases
  --no-files \     # -f: skip files
  --no-config      # -p: skip configuration

> Warning: This overwrites the destination. All existing data in the destination environment is replaced.

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Copy Cron Tasks Between Environments

Copy all cron tasks from one environment to another:

acli env:cron-copy  

Example:

acli env:cron-copy myapp.prod myapp.staging

Useful after mirroring an environment to ensure scheduled tasks match.

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Install an SSL Certificate

acli env:certificate-create  

Options:

acli env:certificate-create \
  /path/to/cert.pem \
  /path/to/private-key.pem \
  --label="My SSL Cert" \
  --ca-certificates=/path/to/ca-bundle.pem \
  --legacy              # Use legacy SSL (non-SNI)

To install from an existing CSR:

acli env:certificate-create cert.pem key.pem --csr-id=

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Typical Workflows

Set up a CDE for a feature branch

# Create the environment
acli env:create "Feature: New Checkout" feature/new-checkout

# Mirror prod data to it
acli env:mirror myapp.prod myapp.

Refresh staging from production

acli env:mirror myapp.prod myapp.staging

Promote staging to prod

acli api:environments:code-switch  main

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Best Practices

1. Mirror before testing — Always sync a CDE from prod or staging before QA.
2. Clean up CDEs — Delete CDEs when done; they consume resources.
3. Test deploys in staging first — Always deploy to staging before production.
4. Copy crons after mirror — Run env:cron-copy after mirroring to keep scheduled tasks in sync.

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Troubleshooting

"Environment not found"

Check available environments:

acli api:applications:environment-list

Mirror fails midway

Check logs and retry. Use --no-databases or --no-files to skip the component that failed:

acli env:mirror myapp.prod myapp.staging --no-files

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Related Topics

• [Pull & Push](../pull-push/SKILL.md) — Sync local and Cloud environments
• [Application Management](../application-management/SKILL.md) — Find application UUIDs
• [Remote Access](../remote-access/SKILL.md) — SSH and Drush on environments

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: acquia
• Source: acquia/acquia-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.