To have a highly available web GIS deployment, configure each individual component for high availability. Each component manages redistribution or failover when a machine in the configuration fails or becomes inaccessible. You need to use third-party tools to configure high availability for some components of a web GIS, such as the load balancer, file server, and source databases. The following sections link to instructions to configure high availability for the ArcGIS components of a web GIS deployment.
Configure a highly available GIS server
How you configure a highly available GIS server depends on whether your GIS server site is a single- or multimachine site. See the following topics in the ArcGIS Server help for information:
- Single machine high availability (active-passive) deployment
- Multiple machine deployment with ArcGIS Web Adaptor
Note that when you federate a highly available ArcGIS Server site with Portal for ArcGIS, set the Administration URL to a URL that the portal can use to communicate with all servers in the site, even when one of them is unavailable (either a web adaptor URL or a load balancer URL). You must enable administrator access through the web adaptor before you can federate using a web adaptor URL.
Also be aware that using a web adaptor or load balancer URL affects the way you connect to ArcGIS Server Manager. For example, if you federate using a web adaptor or load balancer URL, you must connect to Manager using the web adaptor or load balancer; you cannot use the default ArcGIS Server Manager URL of http://gisserver.domain.com:6080/arcgis/manager or https://gisserver.domain.com:6443/arcgis/manager.
Configure highly available data stores
To have highly available hosted feature layer and hosted scene layer caches, install ArcGIS Data Store and configure primary and standby relational and tile cache data stores. Once you add a standby data store, the standby will become active if any of the following occurs:
- The primary data store stops working. ArcGIS Data Store attempts to restart the data store on the primary machine. If it cannot restart, the data store fails over to the standby.
- The primary's web app stops running and attempts to restart the web app on the primary machine. In the rare case that this does not work, the data store fails over to the standby machine.
- The primary machine is unavailable. This can happen if the computer crashes, gets unplugged, loses network connectivity, or is deliberately taken offline. ArcGIS Data Store makes five attempts to connect to the primary machine. If a connection is not possible after five attempts, the data store fails over to the standby.
For more information and instructions, see Add a standby machine.
Configure a highly available portal
To make your portal highly available, configure a primary and secondary portal accessed through a network load balancer, and place the shared portal content directory on a highly available file server. See Configuring a highly available portal for more information and instructions.
Configure highly available source data
You publish data to GIS servers from a variety of sources. If you register folders or databases with the GIS servers in your web GIS, you need to store that source data in a manner or location that meets your high availability needs. For file sources in folders, store on a highly available file server. For databases, use the technology of your database management system to ensure high availability.