Physical and virtual server, Can someone reveiw my plan?

Question

We're just in the process of setting up new hardware and I'm designing how I'd like the ArcGIS for server to be laid out.  Here's my plan, any problems?

Server 1- (virtual server) Web Adaptor

Server 2 - (physical server - blade) ArcGIS for Server Enterprise (windows)

Server 3 + - (virtual servers) Additional ArcGIS for Server Enterprise (windows) as required for load balancing.  (future growth)

I also want to set up Portal in the coming months.  Should that be it's own beast or should it be installed with the Web Adaptor?  The documentation makes it sound like I should install it on it's own machine with it's own web adaptor.  Is that correct? Can I install it on it's own machine and use the existing web adaptor? Or should I re-work the entire installation around Portal?  (I know there's a pile of information out there, but it's tough to wade through to what I want)

I'm planning to do 10.3.1.  Any reason not to?  (besides needing to update people's desktops)

Any thoughts are appreciated!  Thanks for the second opinion everyone!

PaulDavidson1 · Answer

Best practices is an ongoing question and discussion and quite frankly, from my experience, you are not going to get a definitive answer.  This is probably because in most situations, a multitude of different layouts will work.

I spent a  lot of time at the UC this year going to presentations regarding this question.

My interest is mostly with Portal as the center hub.

Even among Esri employees, you will get different answers as to best configuration.

The typical advise is to engage professional services for help with your design.

I finally realized that the best practice was too customized for each solution for that to be a definitive BP guide.

One thing that I kept hearing was: consider your data configuration location.  If that goes down, your site goes down.

Ditto with your web adaptor.

So I've spent some time trying to get a handle on criticality and

Your layout looks fine to me.

I think many folks run the web adaptor on the main AGS box (physical in your case) without any issues.

We do this with 10.1 with no apparent issues (although as a caveat, I have one inherited massive AGS unit that needs a reboot with regularity.  I think this is a more a javaw thing....)

Are you running IIS or Apache on there?  And are you going to host web apps/sites on that box?

If you're only standing it up for web adaptor, seems like a possible resource waste.  Would depend on how many hits you're having across the wire, etc....

Another thing to consider is Failover and Disaster recovery.

Then there's the question of security/SSL: are you federating or just leaving everything open?

A main point out of this years UC was that SSL used to be recommended best practice, especially with Portal, but now is basically considered required.

For me, diagraming is the thing to do.. You get a good feel for dependencies, resources, etc... that way.

Dave Peters offers a 3 day online course regarding Building a GIS and you could get his book, 2nd edition.

There is a head spinning amount of info there.

Portal is a whole other beast.  In 10.3.1, the new Data Store comes into play as well as a hosting server and federation, etc...  And as looks like you know, Portal requires its own web adapter.  The forums indicate there are issues getting Portal and AGS to run on the same server with individual web adapters but that it can be done with care.

With your design, I think you could add Portal in without a huge headache, just would require another server or two.  some folks run Portal, the Hosting Server and the Data Store all on one box along with the data config files.  If any of those go down, you're Portal is almost down anyway. I suppose you could lose the Hosting and Data Store stuff and still have a Portal limping along using any resources registered from your other servers?

When I start considering all of this, I can see why one can't really get a BP answer.

My feeling is you do your best and set it up and go from there.

It does seem that one recommendation from a majority of Esri folks has been to put each major component on its own VM box as much as possible (and to create a fail over for it)  That can consume a lot of resources though.

And I've heard and read that two individual VMs of say (2) cores and 8GB @ is better than one (4) core 16 GB vm box.  But then, I recently read that the latter is the case from Esri's own info:  Virtualization and ArcGIS Server—Installation Guides (10.3 and 10.3.1) | ArcGIS for Server

I suspect a lot of this doesn't come into play until you're one of the folks out there having to deal with 1000s of users.

TracySArchibald · Answer

Thanks guys!

So, here's the actual page I needed from the Server Architecture wiki:

GIS Product Architecture (CPT Demos) - GIS Wiki | The GIS Encyclopedia

I'm looking at the 3-tier configuration.  Based on what I see, my plan would be the best based on available hardware. The web adaptor has a small load in comparison to the services.  (we have another dedicated blade for SQL).  We use many, many services and it's only going to increase....

Since Portal will be installed as it's own beast (with it's own web adaptor), I'll leave that to the side for now.  We've got a little work to do before we worry about that one.  If it would have been beneficial to roll it in at the same time, I would have put a move on it, but since I don't need to, I'll worry about it later...

Does anyone have a good middle ground for documentation on this stuff?  (particularly Portal) The general help documents are super simple, step-by-step instructions and the Server Architecture is super technical (with lots of items I can't control/don't have access to).  Maybe some blog posts on best practices or pros and cons?  My google-fu skills aren't turning much up and it would be nice to be able to share with the team.

ThongYang1 · Answer

Hello Tracy,

You could have Portal install on the Web Adaptor machine or on it own machine, it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish, security policies and who will be using Portal. But to be able to use the Web Adaptor full security purpose, I would remember install the Web Adaptor on a Web Server machine and Portal on a different machine. One thing to remember is that you will not be able to use one Web Adaptor to configure both ArcGIS Server and Portal. What this mean is that you will only be able to configure one Web Adaptor to one application site, you should install one Web Adaptor for ArcGIS Server and one Web Adaptor for Portal.

As for your 10.3.1 question, there shouldn't be any reason to not upgrade to 10.3.1 beside needing to upgrade people's desktop or maybe compatibility with other third party application you may have within your environment.

I hope this help answers your questions.