Limit to the number of ArcGIS Server web-adaptors on single IIS host?

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10-01-2014 12:53 PM
PF1
by
Occasional Contributor II

We have a fairly large ArcGIS Server (AGS) footprint.  We started funneling all traffic through a single location (IIS web-server) for consistency and maintenance and currently have 11 web-adaptors successfully hosted on a single IIS server.  We are having  troubles adding a 12th web-adaptor on that same server.  Basically, we do the following when we have a new site that needs to be established:

  1. Install AGS on a new node and build a 'site'
    1. depending on the site the config-store is either local (if single node)
    2. or on a file-server (multi-node)
    3. Normally running web-tier Authentication
  2. Install 2 'consumption' web-adaptors on our 'public' web-server with admin functions disabled
    1. Web-adaptor 1 = HTTP and HTTPS enabled.  Anonymous access only
    2. Web-Adaptor 2 = HTTPS ONLY with integrated windows auth (IWA) using NTLM and/or Kerberos
  3. Install a 3rd 'admin' web-adaptor on a 'private' web-server that our admins/publishers use to configure or publish to the site

This allows us to host a single point of entry for all of our arcgis server solutions and present with different 'instance names'.  Example:

We seem to have run into a limit on the number of web-adaptors that can be hosted on the www.example.com web-server.  We have the web-adaptor product installed 11 times.  When we launch the install executable for the 12th time it asks us to repair or modify our previous installation. 

So it seems there is a limit to 11 web-adaptors that can be hosted on a single IIS web-server.  Has anyone ran into this same or similar issue?  Our only way around this seems to be to establish a load balancing mechanisim in front of our IIS web-server to send the first 11 web-adaptors to 1 IIS host and the other web-adaptors to another IIS host based on some fancy routing (or URL Re-write) rules. 

Currently running ArcGIS Server 10.2.1 and 10.2.2 in this environment.  Thanks for any info!

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DerekWeatherbe
Esri Contributor

Hello,

Yes, I can confirm that any single version of the IIS Web Adaptor can only be installed 11 times on a machine.

If you would like to deploy more Web Adaptors, you can do the following:

1) In Windows Explorer, make a copy of an existing web adaptor and name it as necessary.

2) In IIS, Make the new folder into a web application

3) In IIS, assign the new application to an application pool, such as ArcGISWebAdaptorAppPool

4) In Windows Explorer, navigate to the WebAdaptor.config file under your application

5) Open the security settings and add 'IIS APPPOOL\ArcGISWebAdaptorAppPool' as a user, giving it 'Full Control'

6) Close Windows Explorer

7) Open http://host/<newapp>/webadaptor and configure it with ArcGIS Server.

The issue with the work around above is that uninstalling and potential patching will not be aware of the hand built web adaptors. Please thoroughly test these extra web adaptors.

How many web adaptor applications do you envision needing in the future for any single version?

Thanks

Derek

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4 Replies
DerekWeatherbe
Esri Contributor

Hello,

Yes, I can confirm that any single version of the IIS Web Adaptor can only be installed 11 times on a machine.

If you would like to deploy more Web Adaptors, you can do the following:

1) In Windows Explorer, make a copy of an existing web adaptor and name it as necessary.

2) In IIS, Make the new folder into a web application

3) In IIS, assign the new application to an application pool, such as ArcGISWebAdaptorAppPool

4) In Windows Explorer, navigate to the WebAdaptor.config file under your application

5) Open the security settings and add 'IIS APPPOOL\ArcGISWebAdaptorAppPool' as a user, giving it 'Full Control'

6) Close Windows Explorer

7) Open http://host/<newapp>/webadaptor and configure it with ArcGIS Server.

The issue with the work around above is that uninstalling and potential patching will not be aware of the hand built web adaptors. Please thoroughly test these extra web adaptors.

How many web adaptor applications do you envision needing in the future for any single version?

Thanks

Derek

PF1
by
Occasional Contributor II

Hello Derek,

Thank you for the quick and helpful response!  We have a *test* environment that simulates the topology 1:1 to production.  We will take your steps and see if we can succeed there.  There were also some registry settings/keys that we found (i removed some content):

11webadaptors.png

Do you know what those are for and if we need to try to reproduce manually for the 12th, 13th, etc web-adaptors?

So far our current 'public facing' topology is supporting 8 AGS 'sites':

  • 4 of which are web-tier auth with 2 web-adaptors each (to support the mix of public and private services)
  • The other 4 are token based (to only support token authenticated specific workflows like Collector for ArcGIS and editing on a portal product) and has 1 web-adaptor each. 

So we ran into our issue adding our last token based web-adaptor (12th).   As for the future... we have plans within 10-15 days to add an additional 3 web-adaptors (2 web-tier to 1 site and 1 token auth) which would bring us to 15.  There are no any other immediate plans but a potential to onboard an additional 2-3 like configurations (each with the 3 web-adaptors).  So total initially planned are 15 but a potential to increase that to 21 or even 24 at some point in the future. 

This is also important for another one of our projects that is hosting close to 1000 services in an ArcGIS 10.0 site.  We are still working through an upgrade path for that one to 10.1+ architecture and we may be splitting that down into multiple sites.  If we do, we will have same requirements (2 'public' web-adaptors for web-tier auth and 1 'private' web-adaptor on our internal network for admin/publishing).  That solution is broken down into smaller 'projects' (called eco-regions) and are put in a specific folder on that arcgis server deployment.  There are currently 7 deployed with a plan for an additional 7 within the next year or two.  So if we took an approach to break these into separate sites, then we would be hosting 14 web-adaptors for that project. 

Thanks again!

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DerekWeatherbe
Esri Contributor

Hi Pat,

From what I can see, that registry information is there for use by the setup when installing/uninstalling/patching and not runtime of the application. However, please test this work around thoroughly.

Thank you for the information on your future plans.

Derek

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PF1
by
Occasional Contributor II

OK... re-opening this thread.  The ArcGIS Server v10.3.1 release extended the limit from 11 installations to 21.  Although we hit our 22nd yesterday and tested out the manual install.  Manual install work around is still good, but it would be great to have native support for more than 21!  I submitted an ideas thread about it today for anyone that wants to vote up): http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=087E0000000kBh8IAE 🙂