Upgrade from 11.3 to 11.4 broke shared instances

[tcaulum_WPPI]

I recently upgraded our environment from 11.3 to 11.4.  I keep up with latest releases as best I can, usually within a month or two. It's not a complicated setup so upgrades are straightforward.  This time, after what looked like a successful upgrade, most of our services were not accessible. 

I attempted the upgrade twice with the same result before realizing only the shared instances were not loading or accessible via REST.  I searched for any reason at all why this is happening but found nothing.  On a whim, I changed the settings for our shared instances from 8 shared instances per machine to 4.  For some reason this fixed it.  I even changed it back to 8 and everything is working fine.  

Just wanted to make a post in case anyone else found this same issue. 

[Yogesh_Chavan]

Hi @tcaulum_WPPI,

What was this setting before the upgrade? Do you recall if this count was different in 11.3 and upgrading to 11.4 changed this to default or something else?

Also, as a side question, we are on 11.3 and as per the docs ESRI had updated its licensing for ArcGIS Pro, and also updating user types with new names and feature. Does it impact in any ways with the upgrade process? Or its the usual workflow we can follow for an successful upgrade?

[tcaulum_WPPI]

It was on 8 shared instances per machine while we were on 11.3 and we never had any issues with it. That setting didn't change during the upgrade, still not sure why it choked it up.

The changes in licensing format did not impact the upgrade in any meaningful way.  There are prompts in post-processing of Portal saying "hey you have some duplicate licensing now, want us to automatically remove that?" but the wizard was able to convert everything else.  If I hear from a user that they're not allowed to access something they used previously, I'll let you know.

[DavidColey]

Hey @tcaulum_WPPI  - can you tell me if you guys were on a concurrent license at 11.3?  I'm getting ready to move to11.4, but we are still on the concurrent license manager at 11.3 for our Pro3.4 users (mostly because we don't have the funding yet to purchase the Professional and Professional Plus user types for GIS staff). 

So I'm trying to figure out the implications... thanks

[tcaulum_WPPI]

Hey David, we have fully converted to username licensing.  However, there is a new version of License manager for Pro 3.4, leading me to believe you can still use it for concurrent licensing, even in Enterprise 11.4. 

[DavidColey]

Thanks for the reply @tcaulum_WPPI  - actually we're good.  I forgot about the conversion mechanism where we are able to convert 1 concurrent Creator to up-to 3 named user types, although I have to double-check the levels.  Yes you are correct, we can still use the concurrent use license manager at 11.4, it is just not required

[tcaulum_WPPI]

Excellent! Though moving on from concurrent licensing takes a little bit of getting used to, it's got some benefits when your users get comfortable with it.

[AdrianRicketts_GNL]

Our organization also observed this behavior when upgrading to ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 from 11.3. We've had an open ticket with ESRI, and one temporary solution was to gracefully stop the ArcGIS Server and restart the ArcGIS Server. This had worked for our staging environment, but not for production.

Our temporary fix was to configure services to dedicated instances, but this is a short-term solution until the issue is addressed appropriately.

I performed the same fix as yourself - decreased the number shared instances per machine from 8 to 4, and then back to 8. This did the trick - great find! Odd, but great find for others that have others that have observed this issue.

[DenisLalonde]

Recently upgraded to 11.4 (from 10.9.1). After a scheduled windows server reboot, we had the same issue with services in the shared instance pool not functioning. With the help of Esri.ca Support, was able to get those services running again by stopping and starting the DynamicMappingHost in Server Admin.

I tried rebooting the server again and was able to recreate the issue, but the stop/start of DynamicMappingHost fixed it again... So, I'm now looking to make sure all services in the pool are working properly and that none of them are bogging everything down on system startup.

 

[JoySoulliere]

Thank you so much.  I also had this issue and stopping and starting the DynamicMappingHost fixed the issue.