Management console
Contents:
Platform.sh provides a responsive management console which allows you to interact with your projects and manage your environments.
Everything you can do with the management console you can also achieve with the CLI (Command Line Interface) .
Environment List 
From your project’s main page, each of the environments are available from the pull-down menu ENVIRONMENT at the top of the page.
There is also a graphic view of your environments on the right hand side, where you can view your environments as a list or as a project tree.
The name of the environment is struck out if it’s been disabled. If it has an arrow next to it, this means the environment has children.
Environments
Once you select an environment, the management console can give you a great deal of information about it.
Activity Feed
The management console displays all the activity happening on your environments. You can filter messages per type.
Header
Within a project’s environment, the management console exposes 4 main actions and 4 drop-down command options that you can use to interface with your environments.
Branch
Branching an environment means creating a new branch in the Git repository, as well as an exact copy of that environment.
The new branch includes code, all of the data that is stored on disk (database, Solr indexes, uploaded files, etc.), and also a new copy of the running services (and their configuration) that the application needs. This means that when you branch an environment, you also branch the complete infrastructure.
During a branch, three things happen:
- A new branch is created in Git.
- The application is rebuilt on the new branch, if necessary.
- The new branch is deployed.
After clicking Branch a dialog box will appear that will provide commands to execute future merges from the command line using the Platform.sh CLI.
Merge
Merging an environment means introducing the code changes from a branch to its parent branch and redeploying the parent.
During a merge:
- The code changes are merged via Git to the parent branch.
- The application is rebuilt on the parent branch, if necessary.
- The parent branch is deployed.
Rebuilding the application is not necessary if the same code was already built (for any environment): in this case you will see the message Slug already built for this tree id, skipping.
After clicking Merge a dialog box will appear that will provide commands to execute future merges from the command line using the Platform.sh CLI.
Sync
Synchronization performs a merge from a parent into a child environment, and then redeploys that environment.
You have the option of performing a Sync on only the code, replacing the data (i.e. databases) of that environment from its parent, or both.
These options are provided in a separate dialog box that will appear when you click the Sync button, along with the Platform.sh CLI commands that perform the same action.
Be aware that sync uses the Snapshot mechanism and will have the same caveats.
Be aware that sync uses the Backup mechanism and will have the same caveats.
Note that Sync is only available if your branch has no unmerged commits, and can be fast-forwarded.
It is good practice to take a backup of your environment before performing a synchronization.
Backup
Creating a backup for an environment means saving a copy of the database so that it can be restored. You will see the backup in the activity feed of you environment in the Platform.sh management console where you can trigger the restore by clicking on the restore link.
After clicking Backup a dialog box will appear that will provide commands to execute future merges from the command line using the Platform.sh CLI.
You can also use the CLI with:
$ platform environment:backup
to create a backup, and
$ platform environment:restore
to restore an existing backup.
URLs
The URLs pull-down exposes the domains that can be used to access application environments from the web.
GIT
The Git pull-down displays the commands to use to clone the codebase via Git.
CLI
The CLI pull-down displays the commands to get your project set up locally with the Platform.sh CLI.
SSH
The SSH pull-down display the commands to access your project over SSH.
Configuration settings
From the management console you can also view information about how your routes, services, and applications are currently configured for the environment.
At the top of the page, click the “Services” tab.
Applications
Select the application container on the left to show more detailed information for it on the right.
The “Overview” tab gives you metadata information regarding the application. It tells you what size container it has been configured for, the amount of persistent disk, the number of active workers and cron jobs, as well as the command to ssh into that container.
Each cron job associated with the application is listed with its frequency, the last time it was run, it’s status, and its command.
The “Configuration” tab provides an overview of the application’s configuration pulled from its .platform.app.yaml file.
Services
Each service has a tab on the left, so select the one you are interested in.
The overview tab gives you metadata information regarding the service. It tells you what size container it has been configured for and the amount of persistent disk given to it in your services.yaml file.
The “Configuration” tab provides an overview of the service configuration that has been pulled from the services.yaml file.
Routes
Each route will appear when you select the Routes tab on the left and describe its type and whether caching and SSI have been enabled for it.