What is the difference between portal and manager

JohnBendix

We are about ready to start our install for ARC GIS SERVER ,etc. I am a little confused about whether we need to istall Portal or not. We plan on sharing our gis maps/data within and outside our domain. I would think portal does a much better job of publishing services, using the web app builder,etc than manager does?

Thanks

RebeccaStrauch__GISP

I'm assuming you are new to the whole "Enterprise" (ArcGIS Server and Portal) installation?  What version do you plan to install?  10.5.x or ??

Every situation is different of course, but you do not have to install Portal to use ArcGIS Server. There are several things that you will need to consider when installing, including how you will manage users and security, and whether you plan to federate your ArcGIS Server and Portal.

For our shop (state agency, no enterprise licensing), we have been running ArcGIS Server for many years (no Portal, except access to ArcGIS Online).  We use our domain's active directory and have our security managed thru ArcGIS Server folders (i.e. some public, some require a domain user).  With federation, Portal takes over the management and things automatically get added and assigned to the user logged in.  Since we have a limited amount of "named users", we would wanted have Server manage the security.  For us, we will use Portal as a on-site ArcGIS Online, to some degree, but will also continue to use ArcGIS Online.  The different being (as I understand it, not yet tested) is that setting up a proxy for our secured services will be much easier with Portal since we can use the "referer" option.  With ArcGIS Online, this is not an option.

Anyway, as mentioned, there are so many options.  I would suggest taking the admin class for ArcGIS Server if you only have one option for one.  They are rewriting the class right now to combined the two courses.  There are many similarities.  Also, check out any of the free options at https://www.esri.com/training/    and Esri Videos | E360 Videos: GIS, Events, ArcGIS Products & Industries