Add or remove machines from an ArcGIS Server site

You can use ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for Microsoft Azure to add machines to the ArcGIS Server sites you deploy on Microsoft Azure to meet your users' demands.

You can add machines to federated ArcGIS Server sites, stand-alone ArcGIS Server sites, or the hosting server of an ArcGIS Enterprise deployment.

When you have multiple machines in your ArcGIS Server site, requests for data from services are distributed across all machines to distribute the load. Adding machines to your site helps improve performance when the site is under a heavy load. For example, if a map containing one of the hosted feature layers on your portal on Azure goes viral, you may need to increase the number of machines in your hosting GIS Server site to keep up with the number of requests. When use of the map decreases, you can delete the additional servers to keep down costs.

Add machines

Follow these steps to add a machine or multiple machines to your ArcGIS Server on Azure.

1. Start ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for Microsoft Azure.
2. Sign in to Microsoft Azure.

   If you want to use the Microsoft Azure Government cloud and have an Azure Government subscription, check U.S. Government Cloud.

3. Choose the subscription that contains the ArcGIS Server site to which you want to add a machine and click next.
4. Click the down arrow next to the deployment you want to alter.
5. Click the Add Server Machines to the site button .
6. Type the password for the machine administrator.

   The user name is prepopulated, as you must use the same machine administrator name used for the other machines in the site.

7. Choose the number of machines to add to the site.
8. Type a name for each machine. If you want to add more than one machine, type a comma separated list of names. For example, to add two machines to a site that already has two machines, you could type myServer3,myServer4.
9. Click the Configure Virtual Machine button to choose machine and disk types and sizes.
10. Click next to proceed to the License and Credentials page.
11. Provide the ArcGIS Server license used to authenticate the other machines in the site.

    The license must match the role of the existing site.

12. Type the user name and password for the site administrator of the existing site.
13. Type the ArcGIS Service account user name and password for the existing site.
14. Click next to proceed to Deployment Options.
15. Choose or create a storage account for your deployment. To create a storage account, follow these steps:
    1. Type a name for the storage account. Names must be unique. Click Check Availability to confirm the storage account name is unique.
    2. Choose the Azure region where your storage will reside.
    3. Choose an existing resource group or create a new one.
    4. Choose the type of redundancy for your storage account: Geo-Redundant, Locally Redundant, or Read-Access Geo-Redundant.

       See Azure Storage replication in Microsoft Azure documentation for a description of each redundancy option.

    5. Once the storage account is created, click close.
16. If your first attempt to add a machine to this deployment fails, check Preserve deployment artifacts upon completion when you run Cloud Builder again. If this second attempt fails, files to help troubleshoot the failure will remain on the virtual machines.

    Files include a deployment log file, a configuration file, the SSL certificate, and the license file you provided.

17. If your IT administrator has placed a wildcard SSL certificate in an Azure Key Vault for you to use or you saved the certificate from the initial deployment in a key vault, click Use Key Vault and choose the Key Vault drop-down list.
18. Click next to proceed to Certificate Options.
19. Specify the SSL certificate to use for your deployment. Esri recommends that you use a certificate issued by a certificate authority (CA).
    • To use a CA certificate, choose Certificate issued by a Certificate Authority, browse to and choose the Pfx File you exported from your certificate, specify the Password set on the file, and, in the Domain Name (Alias) text box, type the CNAME you mapped to your domain.
    • If you are setting up an ArcGIS Server site for testing purposes and, therefore, choose not to use a CA certificate, choose Self Signed Certificate (Automatically generated), and Cloud Builder will generate a self-signed certificate for your virtual machines. Note that people connecting to your ArcGIS Server site and services will receive warnings that the site is not trusted if you use a self-signed certificate.
20. Click next to view a summary of your settings.
21. Review the settings in the Summary pane. If anything needs to be changed, click back to go to the page where you need to change the information. When all settings are correct, click finish to add machines to your ArcGIS Server site.

Remove machines

To remove a machine from an ArcGIS Server site on Azure, change the state of the machine to Delete. See Manage machines in an ArcGIS deployment on Azure for instructions.