Add or remove machines from a 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.

You can also add a secondary machine to a single-machine ArcGIS Enterprise deployment. Doing so makes your portal more highly available.

Add machines

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

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 deployment to which you want to add a machine or machines and click next.
4. Click the down arrow next to the deployment you want to alter. This shows you federated ArcGIS Server sites (if any exist), which allows you to add machines to those sites as well.
5. Click the Add Server Machines to the site button .
6. If you're adding machines to an ArcGIS Enterprise, use the Machine Tier drop-down menu to choose what component to add the machine to.
   • If your portal contains only one machine and you want to add a secondary machine, choose Portal for ArcGIS.
   • To add machines to the portal's hosting server, choose ArcGIS Server.
7. 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.

8. If you have an existing Windows Domain in your Azure environment to which you want to add your machine (or machines), click Domain Join Options.
   1. On the Domain Join Options dialog box, check the Join Existing Windows Domain check box.
   2. Provide the name of the Active Directory domain.
   3. Provide the user name and password for the domain administrator.
   4. Click apply.
9. If you're adding a machine to an ArcGIS Server site, choose the number of machines to add to the site. 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.
10. If you're adding a secondary machine to a single-machine ArcGIS Enterprise deployment, type a name for the secondary machine.
11. Click the Configure Virtual Machine button to choose machine and disk types and sizes and click apply when finished. Consult Microsoft Azure for information on types of machines and disks.
12. Click next to proceed to the License and Credentials page.
13. Provide the appropriate license for the site you're adding to. For example, if you add machines to an ArcGIS Image Server site, you must specify an ArcGIS Server license for the ArcGIS Image Server role. If you add a secondary machine to an ArcGIS Enterprise deployment, specify a Portal for ArcGIS license.
14. Type the user name and password for the site administrator of the existing site.
15. Type the ArcGIS Service account user name and password for the existing site.
16. Click next to proceed to Deployment Options.
17. 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 for the storage account or create one.
    4. Choose the type of redundancy for your storage account: Geo-Redundant, Locally Redundant, or Read-Access Geo-Redundant.

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

    5. Specify the kind of Azure storage account to use: Storage (a legacy account type), StorageV2 (a basic account type), or BlobStorage (only supports Azure Blob storage).
    6. Once the storage account is created, click close.
18. Click next to view a summary of your settings.
19. 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.

    Tipp:

    Click Save Summary to save your site configuration information to a text file so you can refer to it for information such as user names or machine names.

20. Click Save Automation Artifacts to export an archive file (.zip file) containing information and files you can use in automation scripts to re-create this deployment.
    1. Browse to a location on the local disk where the archive file will be created and type a name for the file.
    2. Choose the type of automation format you will use.
    3. Click generate to create the file.
21. When all settings are correct, click finish to add machines to your ArcGIS Server site or a secondary machine to your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment.

Remove machines

To remove a machine from a site, you need to change the state of the machine to Delete. In most cases, you would only do this for ArcGIS Server sites, and only if you determine you don't need the additional resources to handle requests. However, you can also delete a machine from a highly available ArcGIS Enterprise portal or delete the Jump Box machine from your deployment so that it is no longer accessible over the internet. See Manage machines in an ArcGIS deployment on Azure for instructions to delete machines.