We have a team that will be in charge of standing up EC2 instances in AWS to support ArcGIS Server. My team handles the GIS software and will be in charge of installing and configuring ArcGIS Server on those EC2 instances.
What is the best solution for us to automate installing and configuring ArcGIS Server on existing EC2 instances?
I've looked up ArcGIS Cloud Builder but it seems like it must create the EC2 instance from scratch. Would solutions like CloudFormation or Chef be more customizable for our use case? Would we be able use these solutions to add multiple ArcGIS Server machines to a single site as well?
I'd recommend CloudFormation. It may also be helpful to have your IT team create an AMI for you to reference in your CF template. For example, we build a Windows AMI that includes peripheral software (Notepad++, ArcGIS Pro, Firefox, etc) we want to use. You can then reference that AMI ID when you deploy your CF template. Also make sure you are within ESRI's password guidelines - advice: don't use @ symbols and stay under 29 characters. Those have both caused us heartburn in the past.
You'll need to figure out your VPC + subnet(s), IAM user/role, custom domain+elastic IP (if needed), and load balancer (if needed) ahead of time. You'll also need an SSL .pfx ready to go, along with your ArcGIS Server license file. You can set up an S3 bucket for those.
Hi @formergeologist,
form our side for windows we usually use Home · Esri/arcgis-powershell-dsc Wiki · GitHub the PowerShell DSC they are fairly easy to use.
Regards
Henry
Would PowerShell DSC work with autoscaling group? If EC2 autoscaling is automatically spinning up new instances as existing ones reach capacity, would the CloudFormation templates for the EC2 instances be able to invoke PowerShell DSC to install ArcGIS Server on the new instances?
@formergeologist - AWS Cloud Formation Templates for ArcGIS Enterprise and PowerShell DSC are completely different tools to deploy ArcGIS Enterprise in AWS and Powershell DSC does not call AWS Cloud Formation Templates.
If you are interested to setup ArcGIS Server with the AWS EC2 instances auto-scaling group then look the AWS Cloud Formation Template below.
Other high availability templates
About PowerShell DSC
Automation solutions for your portal—Portal for ArcGIS | Documentation for ArcGIS Enterprise
About ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder - another tool to deploy ArcGIS Enterprise
NOTES:
I hope this clarifies.