Latest Contributions by PaulDavidson1

Michael:  I suspect there are going to be many of us thanking you for this posting! ... View more

But I believe you can script the user removal with Python. The PortalPy library on Github I believe has the tools for doing this. And I would imagine that ArcPython (in beta) will have similar functionality. The ArcREST library might also help. When I say script it, I mean you could have a python script that you could pass the user name to and have it remove the user. That's quasi-automated in my mind. Somehow to fully automate, you have to get AD to trigger a function or maybe you could hook to AD and watch the groups and when a name drops off, auto remove it or ...  I have not worked with AD in python but this lib looks pretty simple: Tim Golden's Python Stuff: Active Directory Cookbook or ldap-groups 2.5.3 : Python Package Index That would mean keeping a table of groups in a file and users in the groups (basically duplicating the AD tree for the groups you are enabling in Portal) and running a nightly or weekly process to watch for changes. Maybe the PortalAdmin tools from GeoJobe have something? ... View more

Derek; Can you clarify your comment about Best Practice? I thought it was required that if using a Web Adaptor  (WA) with both Portal and ArcGIS Server (AGS) that you had to use two independent WAs.   True? You don't have to use a WA except in some settings, such as federation, reverse proxy, DMZ usage or NLB.  True? (Seems to me that not using a pair of WAs is just asking for a lot of headaches.) Regarding your comment about best practice: does that mean you can run Portal and AGS on one WA but its not recommended or are you saying that you could run AGS on a WA and Portal with out a WA (or vice versa) but that the latter setup of only one server using a WA is not considered best practice? I will always set it up with two independent WAs and just thought that was required if you want to use a WA.  It's easy enough to install a second one and the overhead seems fairly minimal.  Is that a fair statement? I ask only for understanding and clarification.  To me, the WebGIS world seems to be rapidly expanding and changing and what was a rule in one release is not necessarily a rule a newer release.  I am not complaining. The updates the WebGIS family is undergoing are fantastic. ... View more

Sorry Richard, I have not. We're on a VMware sphere setup on our own blades, etc... But I would think that you are on the right track.  I am dealing with some similar issues related to upgrading 10.4 to 10.4.1 and it seems to be CA cert related.  or intermixing signed certs with self-signed etc... I don't if you've looked at the Chef cookbooks from Esri but they can really simplify and standardize the installation. I am pretty sure they have a cookbook and a sample json install file for AWS setups. Get Started With ArcGIS Cookbook · Esri/arcgis-cookbook Wiki · GitHub Good luck ! ... View more

Something is wrong. What's the exact error message? What URL are you trying to open? Can you connect by  bypassing the webadapter and going through the port? More info on your setup will help.  Is there a federated server, a data store, on different servers or the same one?  etc... Is this an HTTPS only setup? When you connect locally (from RDC'd onto the server), is it going to local host or? i.e. what's the URL that is connecting locally. Depending on various things, it might be as simple as needing https at the front of your URL. ... View more

Benjamin, I have seen this problem, blank pages, when trying to update a Portal site and one of the components being out of whack. For example, Server still at 10.4 and portal at 10.4.1, etc...  Or possibly there being an issue with the CA cert. Or any one of another problems. So it could point to there being an issue with the setup. Look at the logs, trying uninstalling and reinstalling, check the IIS settings, etc...  It can be tricky to figure out the problem.  It could be browser related (always first try flushing the cache of course) but it can also be a setup issue. Best of luck. ... View more

I'd start a help desk ticket... The other thing that occurs to me would be to use Fiddler to look at the traffic and see if you can find out what's going on behind the scenes with the problem? ... View more

What type of SSL Certificate are you using?  I believe self-signed will give you problems beyond the initial installation. It does seem that your problem is Web Adaptor related. When you access Server Manager and REST endpoints via URL, is that via the web adaptor address or via port? I think I would try  (you are using FQDN?) 1. Verify that Portal, ArcGIS Server and Web Adaptors are all 10.4.1   (was this an upgrade or a clean install?  Same box?  Did you install Data Store?  Is AGS Federated ?   1.b Verify the Services are running   1.c Check the Server logs   1.d  Check the Portal logs via PortalAdmin   1.e Verify IIS is correctly setup (you've bound the SSL (not self-signed) to port 443 in IIS?) 2. Check the ArcGIS Server Web Adaptor is correct and functioning as expected. 3. The Portal web adaptor looks correct above but it seems that something is off.    I would try uninstalling it and reinstalling. If that fails, I would probably uninstall both AGS and Portal Web Adaptors and try reinstalling. Still dead: 4. Put in a support ticket?  or uninstall and reinstall Portal and it's Web Adaptor then a support ticket if no luck. FYI - I use the Chef cookbooks for building up an all in one box. It has made my life much easier and the installations are consistent. EDIT:  couple of threads that might be of use say: Clean cookies, try different browser, Portal Users "Sign In" Problem Check the https://YourPortalFQDN/portal/portaladmin/system/webadaptors What's the status show there?  Ditto for AGS. ... View more

Did you make the UC this year Dan? I think one of the most stunning developments I saw was a new ArcGIS Python API (now in Beta.) And to utilize this, requires installing Conda (anaconda I believe is the full name?  new to me) and some other things. It makes heavy use of Jupyter notebooks which are very cool things. Maps right in the notebooks. ArcGIS API for Python | ArcGIS for Developers Based around performing admin for "WebGIS" but can still tie to arcpy, portalpy, etc... It is 3.x (4 or 5) based. I'll probably be sticking it onto a VM and not my main dev PC, at least for while. ... View more

Thanks for the detailed update above.  Makes sense! ... View more

Good stuff Jonathan.  And no, those were not rhetorical questions. I believe the design and layout of a Portal environment is actually a fairly meaty question and like all things Esri (in my experience anyway,) there is often not a single best way to do something. It does boil down to all sorts of issues that I think make it difficult to come up with a best practices scenario. I believe discussions like this are the best way to help one (myself included here) come up with an optimal solution. Knowing how others do it, knowing about the different ways to do it, knowing something about the commitment in time and resources for the various setups, etc...  all can help one make a meaningful decision. Plus, it's an ever changing game in the IT world.  And even for Esri it's a learning experience.  The past year alone has seen major shifts in thinking about BP for setups. The VM world is a real game changer and at the same time, brings in it's own set of new issues that can be counter intuitive. For example, we recently discovered that adding memory to our Maximo application server (big IBM asset management and work order system) actually slowed it down.  Turns out VMs have a sweet spot related to the # of cores, ram size, etc... and if you miss it, you can cause what I would say is analogous to disk thrashing but in this case is RAM thrashing. That's very unintuitive because I've always looked at RAM ops as being very fast, even if going over boundary lines.  At least in this one case, the reality is otherwise. The following might be a reasonable set of questions to answer: Do I really need Portal?  Can I do this with AGOL? - Our tech rep tried really hard to sell me on AGOL and in fact convinced me that not having to deal with supporting Portal was well worth it.  Unfortunately, other corporate issues meant we had to go down the Portal road.  It is nice to have finer grained control over our Portal system.  But it's also very tempting when having to troubleshoot issues to think about how AGOL would make a lot of headaches go away.  Take two AGOL and see me in the morning...  I strongly recommend that potential Portal users really think through this question.  It's very tempting for IT types to want to control everything and be in charge.  But Portal/AGOL is a lot about letting go of control.  You're empowering your users to create their own mapping solutions.  I suspect that at the end of the day, AGOL is actually much cheaper for an organization than Portal is.  Credits are quite cheap.  IT resources are not.  Just something to consider. What sort of uptime does my situation require?   Do I need HA or just DR or neither.  What level of HA do I need?  How far do I need to go to hit a reasonable balance of availability vs. complexity.  The more complex the setup, the more opportunities for failures right?  Even with a full HA setup, you still would need a fully independent DR site to handle the worst case scenario.  For example, if your full HA GIS setup was in the twin towers and you didn't have an offsite DR... What are my resources? This is both hardware and personell.  If you don't have a solid IT crew, Portal is probably not for you.  Even with a solid crew, it's a non-trivial setup.  It looks fairly simple but as you get into it, it's a real beast. What are my companies needs?  How many named users?  What sort of data are we pushing around?  Our field guys love to see imagery so we'll need a fat pipe and a good VPN setup for that. What is my current setup?  We're lucky in the sense we have a mapzilla Silverlight product that folks are very happy with so we can take our time dialing in Portal because we have that to fall back on to. I'm sure there are other critical questions to ask.  I should dig out my notes from Dave's class about Enterprise setups.  😉 I hope others will add to this list and use their experience to share with us the plethora of experiences, pain points, solutions, etc....that the different type of setups have provided them. ... View more

Dave: I might still a version around that maybe installs to ArcMap. A .esriAddIn file is just a zip file.  If you change the extension to .zip, you can then look around.  The one I'm looking at now has internal dates of 5/27/2015 and help about shows ver 10.2.0 ? That doesn't match any release date on the website though.  I suspect this is the July 2015 release that is pushed to my laptop when it sees I'm on arc 10.3 If I tried to install to a 10.4 box, I think it might push down the March 2016 release. I'm thinking the install is related to the ArcGIS version one is using. It seems that on my desktop (10.2.2), I still get the toolbar showing up in ArcMap but on my laptop, 10.3.1, it only works in ArcCatalog and then as a side bar (like catalog tree), not a tool bar. I'm offsite working with my laptop and it took me awhile to possibly figure this out. When I get back in the office, I'll look into the versions I have there.  I did just find this link for Xray for 10.1: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=e1e911d7d7374285b1ef03d06b3ee642 And I looked on my desktop, I have three versions there of Xray, 600KB, 900KB and 2MB (rough estimates) I will say though that as I work with the more recent version, it has a lot of nice features not in the older versions. I can give up ArcMap access and just work through ArcCatalog (which I do anyway when working with datasets, etc...) for the added functionality. If you connect with me, we can trade emails privately. ... View more

Interesting...  Sounds like something either is using a dependency in pip or might use pip to install missing dependencies or...  Regardless, it works which is what matters.  thanks. ... View more

Just curious, why did you need pip if you weren't installing any externals? Just setting it up for future maybes? ... View more

Hey Heather, I also just came across this: Automated Setup & Reporting | ArcGIS Solutions I haven't used it yet but I believe there are the basics of a good scripting setup. ... View more