Best Practice to Migration 10.5.1 Server to a new Machine

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

I have ArcGIS Server 10.5.1 installed on a machine1, I want to migrate this installation to machine2 and then remove the original install on machine1.

what is the recommended procedure to accomplish this?

All Services are hosted on a shared network drive not on the local server machine.

[JonathanQuinn]

We plan on writing a blog to discuss some approaches to this. Since you have your directories on a share already, I would just install the software on machine 2, join it to machine 1, and then remove machine 1 from the site so you're left with machine 2.

[MichaelVolz]

Would there be any issues with this approach if machine 1 is Windows Server 2012 R2 and machine 2 is Windows Server 2016?

[JonathanQuinn]

No, the operating system doesn't matter, it will work between OS versions.

[BillFox]

Does it matter if the starting (single) ArcGIS GIS server is federated with Portal?

Is the ability to do this included with 10.4.1, 10.5, 10.5.1, 10.6, 10.6.1?

[JonathanQuinn]

Yes, it definitely does matter, as there are a few places where the machine URL is baked into config-files/settings. If you're moving Server, you'll want to update the admin URL for the federated Server in the Sharing API. I just took a look at the blog and I think we missed that step, so I'll get that reviewed and updated.

It works with any version of ArcGIS Enterprise.

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

Any update on a the blog post for this procedure?

[JonathanQuinn]

Here is the blog:

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-enterprise/administration/migrate-to-a-new-machine-...

Let us know if you have any comments or questions.

[BillFox]

Thank you Jonathan,

That Scott MacDonald blog link included a reference at the bottom of the page to this blog post about the deprecated multi-cluster ArcGIS Server option which is what was bugging me about this issue.

This blog post clarifies we can still use the cluster option to step into new machines.

How to migrate to single-cluster ArcGIS Server sites 

-Bill

[JonathanQuinn]

Which blog makes you think that multiple clusters in a single site is still OK? We'd like to look at that and make sure we're being clear that multiple clusters is not the way to go. You can migrate machines in and out of a site even if the site only has one cluster, for example the default cluster.