Single-machine high-availability (active-active) deployment

Question

I have a requirement to have ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6 with high availability and zero down time.

Single-machine high-availability (active-active) deployment—ArcGIS Server (Linux) Installation Guide (10.6) | ArcGIS E…

According to the above article, the active-active deployment mechanism requires 2 sites or more which requires synchronization among the sites via a scripting. Does this synchronization includes the ArcGIS Data Store ? the both ArcGIS Data Store are still in active-active mode ?

Does this deployment type is suitable for when there's real-time update to the hosted layer ?

Thank you,

Sela

JonathanQuinn · Answer

It's very difficult to develop a system with zero downtime. As a GIS is typically multiple tiers, (web tier, application tier, data tier, etc), all of them have to be HA and fully resilient in order to get zero downtime. On top of that, your IT staff needs to be "HA" as well. If you experience an issue, your staff needs to be immediately available to address the problem. Often times a separate a data center is configured in the event that your original data center has some type of catastrophic failure like a natural disaster. You'd use machine replication or the DR tool to move data and content over to your standby. All URLs within your deployment, admin URL used for federating, privatePortalURL for Server to Portal communication, front-end URLs, need to be through a fault-tolerant load balancer. You need to have monitoring in place to immediately detect and resolve issues.

Ultimately, there's a lot to consider when developing a system with high uptime. The software does its best to be highly available, (multi-machine Server sites, Portal and Data Store), but minimizing downtime it goes far beyond software and isn't a short conversation to be had over a forum. It's best to seek some type of professional services engagement who can evaluate your current infrastucture and develop an HA plan that fits your needs.

SelaSela · Answer

Thank you for the advise.

Does it mean there's no ideal solution HA with zero down time requirement ?

JonathanQuinn · Answer

No, the full enterprise stack won't work well with active-active siloed environments. It'd be difficult if not impossible to synchronize hosted services between distinct sites. I would just set up a single site with multiple machines:

Deployment scenarios for a highly available ArcGIS Enterprise—Portal for ArcGIS (10.6) | ArcGIS Enterprise

You'd have multiple machines behind a load balancer and multiple of each component type. If any individual component goes down, the software is able to failover automatically to the other component.