Chef Cookbook stops when installing ArcGIS Server.

[deleted-user-qSBucAQszJ_6]

Hello All,

I am testing out Chef for installing ArcGIS Server on an Azure Virtual Machine as a way to standardize our deployment or ArcGIS Server. I started by following the instructions found in both the YouTube video from ESRI ArcGIS Enterprise: Automating Installation and Configuration - YouTube and the instructions found on ESRI's Github site for Chef Cookbooks Deploy a full stack ArcGIS Enterprise on a single machine · Esri/arcgis-cookbook Wiki · GitHub.

When watching the video it looks like the chef cookbook runs until ArcGIS Server is installed completely. However when I run the same command it opens the ArcGIS installation window which has buttons you need to click to proceed with the installation, you can see this below. I'm wondering if someone can give me some direction on why this is happening? Ideally it would not because it goes on to prompt the entering of usernames and passwords which are in the .json file...

Any help would be awesome!!

Thanks,

Christopher

[RandallWilliams]

I think I know what happened. There's 2 installers in play:

1. The screen you're seeing looks like the self-extracting executable (like a zip file that contains the setup files) is trying to lay the install files down in your documents folder.

2. Once that happens, there's a setup.exe that can be called.

My guess is that the script doesn't know what to do with the self extracting installer, which is why it's waiting for input (?)

[deleted-user-qSBucAQszJ_6]

Hey Randall Williams,

Thanks for the reply! Sorry I'm probably going to ask some very basic questions but this is my first time using Chef. The first few times I ran the command chef-solo -j C:\chef\roles\webgis-windows.json errors indicated that the path C:\ArcGIS\10.5\Server\Setup.exe did not exist, so I created that on the VM and placed the Setup.exe there for ArcGIS  Server. This made the command run for a little bit longer until I got to what you see in my original post. 

Does the Chef cookbook from ESRI's GitHub come with the ability to install ArcGIS Server without the Setup.exe? Maybe more generically what steps need to be taken in addition to installing the chef client and the ESRI Cookbook on the VM so that they will run? 

Thanks for the help!

[RandallWilliams]

Are the other setup files in the same directory as setup.exe? Like, there should be a folder with resources called used by the setup.exe, I think called 'setupFiles'.

[deleted-user-qSBucAQszJ_6]

There is a SetupFile folder, but it is in the directory C:\Users\UserProfile\Documents\ArcGIS 10.5\ArcGISServer\SetupFiles. Should it be somewhere else?

Thanks!

Chris

[RandallWilliams]

They should be in the setups directory specified in the config files.

• node['arcgis']['repository']['setups'] = Path to folder with ArcGIS software setups. Default path is %USERPROFILE%\Documents on Windows and ~/arcgis on Linux.
• node['arcgis']['repository']['archives'] = Path to folder with ArcGIS software setup archives. Default path is %USERPROFILE%\Software\Esri on Windows and ~/software/esri on Linux.
• node['arcgis']['repository']['patches'] = Path to folder with hot fixes and patches for ArcGIS Enterprise software. The default path on Windows is %USERPROFILE%\Software\Esri\Patches, on Linux is ~/software/esri/patches.

[pheede-esri]

Hi Christopher,

Beyond the Chef questions you're specifically asking, I would highly encourage you to look at the ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for Microsoft Azure given that you're deploying in the Azure environment.

Chef is a great technology for on-premises installations (bare metal, VMs) and cloud environments where Esri does not provide specialized tooling. However, for cloud environments like Azure or AWS where there's specialized tooling we strongly recommend using those tools. See ArcGIS Enterprise on Microsoft Azure—ArcGIS Enterprise for how to get the Cloud Builder and how to get started.

Cheers,

Philip

[deleted-user-qSBucAQszJ_6]

Philip Heede‌,

Thanks for the recommendation! I used the Cloud Builder to set up my first VM in Azure, It worked really well. Now I'm exploring ways to script the creation of both the VM and the instillation of the software and Chef seems to be the way to do that. I think last time I looked at it Cloud Builder couldn't be used with python or another language if that has changed it would be a lot easier than learning Chef! 

Thanks,

Chris

[pheede-esri]

Chris,

The latest 10.6 release of ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for Microsoft Azure allows you to save the automation artifacts so that you can script the deployment once you've designed it using Cloud Builder:

You find this option on the summary page at the end of the builder wizard. Take a look at the documentation at Automate your ArcGIS Enterprise deployments on Microsoft Azure—ArcGIS Enterprise | ArcGIS Enterprise 

Cheers,

Philip

[JoshHevenor1]

Has there been any progress here beyond "don't use chef"?  It's been a few months and I've gone down a very similar path to Chris's original post. Azure and 10.6.1.   Running chef-client I get the same popup. 

There are many attributes defining setup paths and Randal copied a few from the documentation. I'd like a better description than what's given on github, or some direction on how to set these so I don't get prompted would be ideal.  The plan is to be installing multiple servers in parallel remotely and user interaction is not an option.

node['arcgis']['repository']['setups'] -- I feel this is the extraction folder.  I have this value set but I still get prompted

node['arcgis']['repository']['archives'] -- What is the purpose of this? When is it used?
node['arcgis']['repository']['patches'] -- I assume the install finds patches here once the installation is done.

Also

node['arcgis']['server']['setup']  -- The location of the ArcGIS Server setup executable.  

I point this last one to my EXE and Chef is calling this. I don't see chef trying to define these other folders when it calls this exe:

Z:\ArcGIS_Server_Windows_1061_163968.exe" /qb INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Server" INSTALLDIR1="C:\Python27" USER_NAME="arcgis" PASSWORD="xxxxxxxx"

I'd love to hear if anyone has figured this out.   Thanks!