Reverse Proxy for multiple ArcGIS server sites.

Question

We are planning to upgrade our reverse proxy from Windows Server 2008 r2 and are doing research on what the best way to configure the replacement server (still using IIS).

The interesting wrinkle is that we have have multiple ArcGIS server sites (https://oururl.com/arcgis1, https://oururl.com/arcgis2, etc...). Each site is run by a single server. On the existing reverse proxy, we're using ARR and URL Rewrites to forward incoming traffic to the correct servers.

The Knowledge Base information (see links below) that we based this design on seems to indicate this applies to versions 10 through 10.4 and we're just looking to see if that is still considered best practices of if there are new recommendations. The current documentation does not go into as much details. The biggest specific question is whether or not ARR is needed although I'm not sure how we would properly redirect the traffic without it.

I suspect that we should use the same architecture and that Esri's silence post-10.4 is more because they don't want to provide specific IIS support.

Any thoughts, comments, or scathing rebuttals would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Legacy 10-10.4 KB articles:

How To: Set up a reverse proxy with ArcGIS 10.1 for Server on IIS ARR

How To: Set up a reverse proxy with ArcGIS 10.1 for Server on IIS ARR with SSL

Current reverse proxy information (sans ARR/IIS info):

Configure a reverse proxy server with ArcGIS Server—Deploy | ArcGIS Enterprise

sandeeppatil · Answer

hi,

You just need the loadbalancer.If your application in .net then i will help with that.

Please let me know

MatthewRantala1 · Answer

Thanks for the response, Travis.

I don't think there's any functionality that we would lose, we would just need to properly reconfigure how some things work. I think (I wasn't here at the time) ARR was used with the intent to load balance using IIS server farms but in reality all of our farms are single machines so that's not really being utilized. These farms include both ArcGIS Server sites & general web applications.

We are currently using web adaptors for each of our AGS sites, they're running on the AGS server machines instead of the reverse proxy. Not sure what we gain/lose if we move the web adaptors to the reverse proxy other than maybe reduce the number of URL Rewrite rules we have to create.

We don't have a corporate load balancer and the reverse proxy server we're using is dedicated solely for our GIS needs.

We don't have a compelling reason to change the architecture but we're reviewing the architecture as part of replacing the reverse proxy & application servers. Our AGS servers are on updated OS so they're not part of this update process.

Thanks again for the feedback, I understand why Esri wouldn't want to go down the rabbit hole of providing IIS support.

Travis Shore · Answer

Hello,

You can certainly setup ArcGIS Server with a third party reverse proxy or with Esri web adaptors which is just a reverse proxy + load balancer (which I would say is the most common approach for the majority of our customers). My main question would start with: Do you feel you would lose any functionality by using web adaptors instead of your current method? Certainly if you have a corporate reverse proxy or load balancer you can feel free to use that instead of a web adaptor. That being said, Esri Support may be limited in terms of troubleshooting and supporting IIS and its URL rewrite module as our software just isn't in the picture in that scenario (as opposed to when there is a web adaptor) and that is why our documentation will be limited on that subject as well.

About the ArcGIS Web Adaptor—ArcGIS Server (Windows) Installation Guide | ArcGIS Enterprise

If you are in an unfederated (no Portal) environment, you certainly have the ability to "test run" the web adaptor in this new setup. You can configure 1, 5, 10, etc. web adaptors if you would like and see if it works for you. If not, you can always use your current approach.

Regards,

Travis