Latest Contributions by PaulDavidson1

Good points Jonathan, which of course is why the HA approach is out there.  Eventually I will try to setup the SA site. In our case, we have a DR site at a separate location where the primary site is replicated (snapshot) to DR on some defined backup basis, often hourly, depends on the application. If primary goes down, we bring up the DR with very little effort.  That at least is theory.  The Primary/Secondary DR setup and a trial DR has not yet been tested in action yet. However, we did just have to recover both Test and Production from our VM backups (nightly)  This took about ten minutes. But you lose what work was not in the backup.  This is not the HA setup.  But a benefit of a good VM environment. We are definitely looking into incorporating the Disaster Recovery tools into the mix. Regarding distributed vs. single server setups, consider this: in a distributed setup, you are now maintaining 3 or 4 individual servers, any one of which can go down.  And then what?  Can Portal really continue to function if you lose anyone of the components? It will of course depend on your setup, redundancies, etc... but if you lose your Portal server, your portal is down.  Maybe you have some apps running off AGS that could continue but most Portal setups need Portal.  Lose your AGS and there go all your services, what are you left with that is of any use?  Losing the Data Store could be the least painful IF most of your data is not hosted on there. All scenarios have plus and minuses that need to be carefully considered relative to each site's needs. I'm waiting to see how the single box works in terms of performance once it gets into heavy use. Certainly for uptime, an HA failover setup, is probably about the most solid.  But I'm sure that introduces issues. For example, I had setup our Production Portal with an eye toward an HA setup.  This means the config stores are on a shared file server.  Our shared file server had a NIC lockup which took everything Portal related down.  I think even in an HA Portal environment, now everything is down in that scenario.  Unless of course, you have a failover file server. And failover typically requires a NLB.  So if that goes down...  A truly failsafe setup can be a real rabbit hole.  Fortunately, most GIS shops can handle a bit of downtime. I guess we just always need to make sure our paper map books are still available for the absolute worst case scenario  🙂 ... View more

Are you doing this via ArcObjects or Python? Can you create a model ModelBuilder that does what you need? If so, then export the model to Python code and use that as the framework for your tool. If doing ArcObjects, you should still be able to use the Python code as pseudo code, pointing you in the right direction for the appropriate function calls. Just noticed this was 2015, not 2016... will post anyway as it might help someone out. ... View more

Absolutely, +1 ... View more

Very interesting...  and useful Thanks Adam Looking at that link, this must be new in 10.4 because the "other versions" link at 10.3 is greyed out. ... View more

Hey Jonathan: When you get a chance, could reply to my question regarding this scenario in thread: Portal Login Issues or Limitations? I think these are basically duplicate threads and I have been told by Esri that Portal can only have one WA. Thanks... ... View more

Hey Joe: I'd look at the browsers being used on the two different OS boxes?  I assume both have IE?  Tried Chrome or? Compare the IE settings? Don't use compatability mode in IE.  Apparently that makes IE want to behave like ver 7 and Portal only supports IE 9 and up. You're logging into Portal from Win Servers rather than from desktop OS like Win7/8/10 , right? I know I had to spend some frustrating time tweaking the various IE settings on our WinSrvr 2012 R2 server that is hosting Portal/AGS/DS when logging in directly from that server using IE. IE on WSrvr2012 is setup differently than a desktop version, more control over security, etc... Unfortunately, I was in the try all sorts of things mode and didn't keep very good notes on what I did. If you search here for issues related to browsers and/or url doubling etc... you should find some threads that might have useful info. For example: Portal 10.4 Request.Path error on IIS There are some other threads about AD/IWA also that might have useful info? Unfortunately, it seems that info on the inner workings of Portal (config files, etc...) can be hard to come by. I suspect this is on purpose to keep us from royally screwing things up.  Portal is tricky enough when just working through all the provided interfaces.  I can only imagine the support headaches if (when) folks start digging deep and modifying things. Maybe also check your portaladmin and ArcGIS/admin web sites and look through your settings? FWIW: We do have our Win2012 servers letting us log into Portal 10.4 The Test server is tied to IWA and we can get in that way.  However, we don't have ADFS (yet) running so that might be a difference in our's & your's setups. good luck ... View more

Try setting (or verifying) that your My Organization > Edit Settings > Map > Basemap Gallery & Default Basemap are set to Default. On our Dev & Test Portals, I created a new group, available to everyone, called SomethingBasemaps and then checked "Share the Esri default basemaps to this group..."  Save this, go check a map then come back and in these two instances,  I then had the Esri basemaps populating the Default Basemap drop down and I could change it from the Topo one. However, on our Production Portal, I cannot get this to work and currently we don't even see Esri basemaps, such as you report.  But our Prod Portal has a problem with the Data Store so I'm waiting to see about this. I would also jump to 10.4 because it has a number of enhancements over 10.3.1. EDIT: I was able to correct the problem with Esri basemaps not showing in our CustomBasemap group in the Production Portal. I just deleted the CustomBasemap group in Portal and then recreated it and things started working ok. ... View more

Hey Adam: I'm a bit confused by this.  It's my understanding that you can only install & setup one Web Adapter (WA) per Portal instance. Plus the WA for AGServer, which can have multiple WAs (one for normal usage and one for admin for instance.) So while AGS can have multiple WAs, I though Portal could only have the one. Have you been able to install a second one for Anon access? ... View more

FYI... Just came across this, if you haven't seen it, it might have some clues: Using a reverse proxy server with Portal for ArcGIS—Portal for ArcGIS (10.4) | ArcGIS for Server ... View more

I wish I could remember better what I've heard about this setup because someday we'll be needing it. It might be that you need a Portal or AGS out in the DMZ and that's were the WA is installed to act as proxy back inside the firewall.  Maybe it's another AGS you put out in the DMZ and then add a WA to it. If I can find any notes, I'll post back to here. ... View more

I'm very curious about this and what you describe is what I've been told in the past. It's my understanding that you need a WA in the DMZ in addition to the ones inside the firewall. At least, that's how I recall having heard the setup described. Does the Wiki have any additional info on this: System Design Strategies Preface - GIS Wiki | The GIS Encyclopedia ... View more

I can't help with the Java Web Adaptor install but I wasn't quite clear about one thing in your post. You do know that you have to install two separate web adaptors right? One for ArcGIS Server and one for Portal?  Each configured independently of the other. Both can be on the same machine. Just in case you missed it: Installing ArcGIS Web Adaptor—Installation Guides (10.3 and 10.3.1) | ArcGIS for Server ... View more

Excellent, looks like it's also available online which is always easier to get approval for than travel. Thank you Michael! Edit: 2017:  I took this class in mid 2016 and even though I had already setup a Dev/Test/Portal scenario, I found it very helpful and often use the course literature & my notes as a reference. ... View more

Heather: Sorry, I meant to (or thought) I'd answered your question.  I was going to point you towards that exact solution. There are also the Portal admin tools from GeoJobe: Admin Tools New - Geo Jobe We're still working through our work flows to go from Dev/Test/Prod but I imagine we'll make heavy use of the Online Assistant.  We also do a lot of scripting with Python so we'll be using PortalPy and ArcREST tools. ... View more