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What is ArcGIS Enterprise?

ArcGIS Enterprise, the next evolution of the ArcGIS Server product line, is a full-featured mapping and analytics platform. It includes a powerful GIS web services server plus dedicated Web GIS infrastructure for organizing and sharing your work in order to make maps, geographic information, and analyses available on any device, anywhere, at any time.

Supported environments

ArcGIS Enterprise has a flexible deployment model that supports various configurations:

This flexibility allows you to add a variety of capabilities and distribute your deployment across infrastructure that best supports your business needs. Your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment can also be connected or disconnected from the open Internet.

What's included with ArcGIS Enterprise?

The ArcGIS Enterprise product includes the following software components that are designed to work together:

  • ArcGIS Server—the core web services component for making maps and performing analysis.
  • Portal for ArcGIS—allows you to share maps, applications, and other geographic information with other people in your organization.
  • ArcGIS Data Store—lets you configure data storage for hosting and federated servers used with your deployment.
  • ArcGIS Web Adaptor—allows you to integrate your ArcGIS Server and Portal for ArcGIS with your existing web server and your organization's security mechanisms.

ArcGIS Enterprise licensing

ArcGIS Enterprise is licensed per user and by system capacity. Named users exist at two levels, providing secure access to information and content creation capabilities. See Organization roles and membership levels for detailed information on named users and capabilities at the two levels.

ArcGIS Server is a central component of ArcGIS Enterprise. System capacity and capabilities are provided through licensing ArcGIS Server by CPU cores according to one or more server roles. See below for a list of roles and extensions available for ArcGIS Server.

ArcGIS Server roles and extensions

ArcGIS Server can be licensed in a variety of roles, depending on the capabilities you want to enable for your deployment. ArcGIS Server also has several extensions available for purchase. For a full description of the options for each ArcGIS Enterprise edition, see the ArcGIS Enterprise functionality matrix. See also ArcGIS GIS Server capabilities and extensions for details. The roles available for ArcGIS Server are as follows:

  • ArcGIS GIS Server—For serving GIS resources such as map services, feature services, and geoprocessing services to your users. This role is also necessary for providing hosting for an on-premises Web GIS, where the GIS Server acts as the portal's hosting server. You can license ArcGIS GIS Server as Advanced, Standard, or Basic. All editions of ArcGIS Enterprise include an ArcGIS Server licensed in a GIS Server role.
  • ArcGIS Image Server—For publishing image services for on-the-fly visualization and performing distributed analytics on raster data.
  • ArcGIS GeoAnalytics Server—For performing distributed analytics on tabular and feature data.
  • ArcGIS GeoEvent Server—For enabling real-time event-based data streams to be integrated as data sources in your GIS.
  • ArcGIS Business Analyst Server—For enabling organizations to host Business Analyst-based capabilities.

See About ArcGIS Server licensing roles for more information.

To use these ArcGIS Server roles, install the ArcGIS Server component and apply the appropriate license file to enable the role. If desired, multiple roles can be enabled on a single ArcGIS Server site, although it is generally recommended to use a single role per site if possible.

Base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment

A base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment consists of a combination of three primary components—Portal for ArcGIS, ArcGIS Server, and ArcGIS Data Store—that together comprise a Web GIS. This provides foundational mapping and analysis capabilities along with secure sharing, app infrastructure, and information management functionality. ArcGIS Server must be licensed at the GIS Server Standard or GIS Server Advanced level in this deployment. See Base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment for details.

This base deployment provides for both self-service mapping capabilities through the web-based portal and for publishing and sharing workflows from ArcGIS Desktop.

Additional server deployment

ArcGIS Image Server, ArcGIS GeoEvent Server, ArcGIS GeoAnalytics Server, and Business Analyst Server are additional licensing roles for ArcGIS Server. These server roles can be licensed in addition to the base purchase of ArcGIS Enterprise (Standard or Advanced). Multiple server license roles can be applied to the same machine or site as the base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment, or they can be deployed independently of the base deployment. To ensure enough machine resources will be available to support server operations, review the system requirements for each server licensing role before configuring a multirole server or server site. It is generally recommended to deploy separate sites for each role.

See Additional server deployment for in-depth information on how to add more capacity and functionality to your base deployment using additional server roles.