Tutorial: Creating your first Web GIS configuration
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This tutorial provides an overview of setting up a basic on-premises Web GIS. This configuration is commonly used for testing and prototyping purposes. It enables self-service mapping and can be used with ArcGIS Pro, ArcMap, and other client applications. Although this configuration can be used in a production system, your performance, system architecture, and other requirements will dictate the deployment pattern your production Web GIS follows.
The resulting Web GIS will include the following:
- A GIS server used as a hosting server
- Portal for ArcGIS
- ArcGIS Data Store
- Two ArcGIS Web Adaptors
Prerequisites
To create a Web GIS, you'll need the following:
- Setups for ArcGIS Server, Portal for ArcGIS, ArcGIS Data Store, and ArcGIS Web Adaptor.
- License files for authorizing your software. This will include an authorization file for ArcGIS Server and a file for authorizing Portal for ArcGIS members.
- A trusted certificate for enabling HTTPS.
- Sufficient disk space and memory. To install the components listed above on a single machine, it is recommended that the machine have a minimum of 16GB of RAM and at least 10GB of disk space available. You can see the full system requirements for each component in its installation guide.
- A .zip file containing a shapefile with fewer than 1000 features.
Once you have these prerequisites in place, follow the steps below to set up your Web GIS:
- Install and authorize Portal for ArcGIS. See the Portal for ArcGIS installation guide for more information.
- Create the initial administrator account.
- You'll be prompted to install ArcGIS Web Adaptor. Before you do this, you must enable HTTPS on your web server.
- Install the Web Adaptor. Since this prototype setup will include two Web Adaptors, name this one portal. Configure the Web Adaptor with your portal using the initial administrator account. See About the ArcGIS Web Adaptor for more information on installation and configuration.
- Install and authorize ArcGIS Server. The ArcGIS for Server install guide contains detailed information about the software installation process.
- Create your site and remember your primary site administrator account username and password. See Creating a new site in the ArcGIS Server documentation for more information about this process.
- Enable HTTPS for your GIS server. Open the ArcGIS Server Administration Directory and change the security protocol of the GIS server to either HTTP and HTTPS or HTTPS Only. Wait for ArcGIS Server to fully restart. For more information on enabling HTTPS for your GIS server, see Enable HTTPS on ArcGIS Server in the ArcGIS Server documentation.
- Install a second Web Adaptor named server and configure the Web Adaptor with your GIS server. You do not need to enable administrative access.
- Install ArcGIS Data Store and create a data store. Register the data store with your ArcGIS Server site. See the ArcGIS Data Store help for more information.
- Log in to the portal using your initial administrator account.
- Browse to the My Organization > Edit Settings > Servers page.
- Click Add Server and provide a Service URL. This URL is where your GIS services will be accessed. This is through the Web Adaptor named server. For the Administration URL, add the URL that the portal will use to communicate with the GIS server. This should have 6443 in the URL. Then, provide the username and password for the primary site administrator or any ArcGIS Server administrator.
- Set your newly added server as the portal's hosting server and click Save.
- To test whether your Web GIS is working properly, add your zipped shapefile to the portal. Navigate to the map viewer by clicking Map. Click Add > Add Layer from File and browse to the location of the .zip file. Click Import Layer, and the shapefile contents should appear on the map.
You can access the portal using a URL in the format https://webadaptorhost.domain.com/webadaptorname, where your Web Adaptor is named portal. The ArcGIS Portal Directory can be accessed using a URL in the format https://webadaptorhost.domain.com/webadaptorname/portaladmin. The URL for ArcGIS Server Manager is in the format https://gisserverhost.domain.com:6443/arcgis/manager.
You can further configure the portal, including security, membership, groups, and utility services by following the instructions in the Portal Administrator Guide.