What VM's are you using in Azure?

[MichaelTorbett]

Hello all,

For those of you using ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Pro in Microsoft Azure, I'm curious which VM's you have chosen. Is it meeting your needs?

Thanks,

Michael

[MarceloMarques]

@AbiDhakal 

There is no need to request a new VM. The cloud administrator can power off the existing machine and change the machine type to add more cpu and memory.

However, if your plan is to create an image backup of the existing machine and then spin a new machine with more resources and then remove the old machine, then be aware of the following.

- The public IP that is associated with the external URL can be used on the new VM. You can disassociate it from the old machine and then associate it with the new VM.

- If you have ArcGIS Enterprise with Portal, Server, Datastore on the same machine (silo deployment) then the Static IP address cannot change, this means you need to record the Static IP of the old VM then delete the old VM, and when you create the new VM using the image backup you need to specify the same Static IP of the old VM, otherwise Portal will be corrupted and it will not start, there is no fix or workaround for this, the machine needs to have the same Static IP.

- If you have only ArcGIS Server (No Portal and No Datastore) then it is ok to create the new VM from the image backup and let the new VM to have a new Static IP address.

I hope this helps.

[AbiDhakal]

@MarceloMarquesWe would like to understand more of what you are saying, please.

Our present VM is: DS4_v2. This VM has run out of capacity. We cannot add more RAM to it. It has reached its limits. It has 28 GiB of RAM and we need 64 GiB.

In reference to your message: "There is no need to request a new VM. The cloud administrator can power off the existing machine and change the machine type to add more cpu and memory".

What is changing machine type? How can we add more memory or cpu without a new VM?

We are looking at E8bds_v5. This machine has 64 GiB of RAM. What should be our next step?

Thank you for your great insight. It has been very helpful.
Abi

[AbiDhakal]

@MarceloMarques

I forgot to mention this, Sir. For your information, we have ArcGIS Enterprise with Portal, Server, Datastore on the same machine. Can we just power off the VM change the machine type ( what does this mean?) from DS4_v2 to E8bds_v5, add more cpu and RAM and power it back on. Please tell me, no ArcGIS Enterprise Migration needed?

Thank you,
Abi

[MarceloMarques]

@AbiDhakal - yes, the Azure Administrator can open the Azure Console and Power Off the VM, and then change the machine type to add more cpu and memory and then Power On the VM again. Therefore, there is no need to migrate ArcGIS Enterprise, nor create a new VM from a machine image backup. 

Change the size of a virtual machine
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/resize-vm?tabs=portal
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devtest-labs/devtest-lab-resize-vm

[AbiDhakal]

@MarceloMarques 
Changing the machine type means the ability to change it from DS4_v2 to E8dbs_v5. This will only require Powering Off the DS4_v2, and then changing the machine type to E8bds_v5 and then Powering On the VM.

What happens if the present machine type has Windows Server 2016 and we want Windows Server 2022? Is this going to be a whole different ball game unlike the cpu and RAM deal?

Thank you, Marcelo.
Abi

[MarceloMarques]

What happens if the present machine type has Windows Server 2016 and we want Windows Server 2022?

You will need to take a machine image backup and then perform a Windows OS Upgrade. If something goes wrong with the OS upgrade then you can use the image backup to restore the machine.

or

Create a new Azure VM ArcGIS Enterprise Deployment and republish all your services.

or

Create a new Azure VM ArcGIS Enterprise and use the webgisdr utility to restore the Site.

Back up and restore best practices—Portal for ArcGIS | Documentation for ArcGIS Enterprise

or

Reach out to Esri Professional Services for assistance to migrate and upgrade your Azure ArcGIS Enterprise Deployment.

Note:

Question: Is it possible to change the name of the Portal & Server Webadaptors ???

Answer: From the technical support stance, it is unsupported, here's the doc that refer to:

https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/portal/latest/administer/windows/using-a-reverse-proxy-server-with-...

[AbiDhakal]

@MarceloMarques Great information! Thank you for the knowledge. I will stay in touch.
Abi

[AbiDhakal]

@MarceloMarques 
I got one more thing I need to ask, Marcelo.
Once the machine type is changed will we have to restore SQL Server Enterprise Data (sde) connection on the new machine type or will it automatically have all that in place?
Thank you,
Abi

[MarceloMarques]

Azure Machine Type change to increase or decrease cpu and memory resources does not affect any software on the VM, everything remains the same.