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Quick start guide

Do the following to start running ArcGIS Server on Amazon Web Services:

  1. Create an Amazon account and make sure it includes Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) access.
  2. Contact Esri Customer Service or your local distributor and provide them with your Amazon account number. Customer Service will then share the ArcGIS for Server Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) with your account.
  3. Download and install ArcGIS Server Cloud Builder on Amazon Web Services. You can access this download when logged in to My Esri. It is listed with your other Esri software downloads. Install Cloud Builder on your own desktop machine.
  4. Use ArcGIS Server Cloud Builder on Amazon Web Services to create your site on Amazon.
  5. In the Catalog window in ArcMap, add an ArcGIS Server connection to your new site.
  6. Use ArcGIS for Desktop to publish a test map service to your new site. Because you haven't yet registered any data locations with the server, the data will be copied to the server automatically when publishing. That's okay for this exercise as long as you don't put a lot of data in your test map.
  7. Connect to the Services Directory of your site to verify that the service published successfully.
  8. Optionally, perform more detailed administrative tasks using the AWS Management Console. The console allows you to change the specs of your GIS server machines, detach and attach storage drives, alter security groups, and so forth.