Acrolinx is committed to being a responsible global corporate citizen. In support of our commitment to responsible environmental stewardship, Acrolinx has implemented the Sandbox On-Demand Program.
What is the purpose of this program?
Resulting from a resource consumption review of our cloud-hosted environments, we surfaced a significant number of under-utilized resources, which consume energy and produce carbon emissions 24x7x365, yet are rarely used. The bulk of the underutilized systems were non-production development and test systems (aka “sandboxes”) These have been generally deployed for short-term use, but allowed to operate perpetually. The team was tasked with developing a solution in which these non-production systems could be programmatically shut down, when not required, and restarted on demand.
What is the “Sandbox On-Demand” Program?
The Acrolinx Sandbox On-Demand system manages all sandbox shut down and start up. This doesn’t impact your Acrolinx Production Platform in any way. The system defaults sandboxes to a normally off state, effectively “hibernating” into a zero emissions baseline status. When a hibernating server is needed/requested, the system will be directed to initiate sandbox start up, update/patch the server as needed, and re-establish monitoring.
Does the Sandbox On-Demand system affect the production Acrolinx Platform?
No, it has zero impact on your Acrolinx Production Platform. It’s specifically designed to only manage the start up and shut down of non-production sandboxes.
What will I see when I try to use a hibernating sandbox?
When you attempt to reach your hibernating sandbox URL, you’ll encounter a typical “503 Service Unavailable” message. In the near future, we intend to present a more useful and informational support message in place of the 503 message. It will look like this:
How can I start up the sandbox?
To start up your Acrolinx Sandbox, the fastest path will be to submit an inbound Support ticket at https://support.acrolinx.com and select "Sandbox Start Request" from the "Type" field.
Alternatively, you may send your CSM a request via email, though this may slightly delay the response.
With either method, we’ll activate the sandbox and notify you when it’s accessible.
How long will the sandbox stay running?
By default, the Sandbox On-Demand system will return a sandbox to a hibernation state in 1-2 days.
For certain Support activities, which require a sandbox to stay active for an extended time frame, we’ll instruct the system to delay hibernation until such activity is complete. These longer-term activities would include such work as:
- Platform Version Upgrades
- Guidance Package Updates
- New Use Case Training and Configuration Projects
- Support Triage and Issue Reproduction Efforts
- Customer One-Off Requests for Time-Bound Development Platform Access
If you require a sandbox for an extended time frame, please contact your CSM who will submit a request for an extended start up.
Will this make a difference?
We can all agree that having a sandbox “always on” can be convenient, but we believe that it would be irresponsible and harmful to then leave idle systems running 24x7x365. We believe that this solution offers a very compelling compromise, in which we retain functionality, but limit environmental impact.
At Acrolinx, two of our core values are that “We respect and care about everybody” and “We do what we say we’ll do.” We believe making the commitment to minimizing waste, prioritizing sustainability, reducing our environmental impact, and following through on that commitment supports those values.
Acrolinx Privacy Policy
Read the Acrolinx Privacy Policy to find out more about your rights as a GDPR data subject and to find out how we process your data.
If you have any questions, including regarding the privacy and confidentiality of your data, please write to support@acrolinx.com. To exercise data subject rights, please contact gdpr@acrolinx.com.