Installing latest Notebook Server on Windows

Question

Just want to share my experience, after one day of troubleshooting Docker/network connection issues

1. DNS issues - the container was able to access internet urls, but somehow it could not reach the portal.internal.hostname:7443. Turns out that we need to add a firewall rule to Windows Defender

https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/notebook/latest/install/windows/common-problems-and-solutions-notebook-server-.htm is misleading because dockerExtraHosts does not work on Windows (wasted some time here) and does not resolve the issue I faced

2. Javascript errors - some JS resources could not be loaded properly under portal/home/notebook

Portal\framework\webapps\arcgis#home
otebook
otebookhome.html is one of the affected html templates

3. Docker Desktop is not supported, but it is possible to install Docker Engine (binaries) as a separate service entry (with its own daemon.json), on top of Docker Desktop. Just make sure their services are not started at the same time.

sc create docker-binaries binPath= ""C:\Program Files\Docker\dockerd.exe" --run-service -H tcp://localhost:2375 -H npipe:// --service-name docker -G docker-users --config-file C:\ProgramData\Docker\config\daemon_binaries.json" DisplayName= "Docker Engine (binaries)" start= demand

MikaelJ · Answer

Notebook Server 11.3//11.1 on Windows is horrible experience.

Amount of BUGs, issues and unsupported tricks one needs to overcome is horrendous.

They should simply state "supported on Linux only" and it would solve the case.

I've tried all options available on Windows and docker engine is the most stable.

Regards,

Mikael

WilliamKo · Answer

I think it is rather challenging due to how Docker works on different OS environments, and partly because I needed it work with Docker Desktop for access to Linux containers on the same hardware (this support was dropped after 11.3 so right now there is no good way to utilize GPUs with Notebook Server on a pure Windows setup - this might actually be a deal breaker)

CodyPatterson · Answer

Hey @WilliamKo

I also installed the Notebook Server on version 11.1, and it was nothing short of one of the most difficult installation experiences I've had with a software to date.

If you have any ways that the Esri team would be able to update or support their documentation, be sure to put in either an Enhancement request support ticket or an idea on the community forum.

Let me know if you have any further issues, I may be able to help as it took me around 2 months of troubleshooting before I was able to get mine running.

Cody