The installation is not automatically logged, but if you run the installation from the command line, you can include parameters that create a log file. See the ArcGIS for Server (Windows) Installation Guide to learn about creating a log of the installation.

You can view which features of ArcGIS Server are installed through the Programs and Features dialog box in Windows. Choose ArcGIS Server > Uninstall/Change > Modify to view or change the list of installed components.

Several widely used Internet host name specifications have designated the underscore character as nonstandard. Although Windows allows you to use the underscore in a machine name, it can still cause problems when you interact with other servers and platforms. For this reason, ArcGIS for Server will not proceed with installation on servers that have an underscore in the host name.

When you uninstall ArcGIS Server, some folders and files are left on disk. These are left for your convenience if you reinstall or upgrade the product. If you don't plan on reinstalling, you can delete these files.

You might notice persisting files located at <ArcGIS Server installation directory>\arcgisserver that include the following:

• server directories
• config-store
• log files

Leaving these folders preserves map and globe caches, your installation configuration, and other server resources that you might want to keep if you reinstall. Server directories that you created and registered on your own are also not affected by uninstalling.

If you receive a message about your license being expired, contact Esri Customer Service to obtain a new license and reauthorize ArcGIS Server using the ArcGIS Software Authorization Wizard.

When ArcGIS Server is configured to enforce security with users and roles managed in Microsoft Active Directory, it uses the Active Directory Global Catalog to obtain user and role information. However, ArcGIS Server will be unable to enforce security if it binds to a domain controller that does not also serve as a global catalog. In this case, you'll need to manually specify the domain controller used by ArcGIS Server after performing the installation. For full instructions, see Configuring the domain controller used by ArcGIS Server.

By default, ArcGIS Server exposes its web services through port 6080 and uses a site name of arcgis. For example, the default URL to an ArcGIS Server site is http://gisserver.domain.com:6080/arcgis. The recommended way to expose your web services through a different port and site name is to install ArcGIS Web Adaptor.

After you install ArcGIS Server, you can change the account by using the Configure ArcGIS Server Account utility. This utility is bundled with the ArcGIS Server installation and can be launched by clicking Start > ArcGIS > ArcGIS for Server > Configure ArcGIS Server Account.

You should not use your operating system's tools to manually change the ArcGIS Server account. The utility has been designed to apply permissions to various directories across all the machines in your deployment. Changing the account manually could result in server failure leading to system downtime.

For full instructions on how to change the ArcGIS Server account using the utility, see The ArcGIS Server account.

If you are in a highly secure environment, you should restrict file permissions to the configuration store, and disable the primary site administrator account. Performing these two tasks ensures that the primary site administrator account password reset script will have no effect on the security of your site.

To learn more, see Best practices for configuring a secure environment.

If you have multiple GIS server machines participating in your ArcGIS Server site, the site requires the network to function.

If you have a one-machine deployment—that is, one GIS server machine participating in an ArcGIS Server site—ArcGIS Server will operate correctly when disconnected from the network as long as all the data referenced by your GIS services are stored locally on that machine. Additionally, if the GIS server machine is part of a domain and you have disconnected the computer from the domain, you must specify a local account as the ArcGIS Server account.

If your server administrator has configured the Web Adaptor to block administrative access to the server, you will not be able to connect to the server in ArcGIS for Desktop through the Web Adaptor URL using an administrative or publisher connection. Alternatively, you can connect directly to the GIS server in ArcGIS for Desktop by using the URL format http://gisserver.domain.com:6080/arcgis. For more information, see About connecting to ArcGIS Server in ArcGIS for Desktop.

Yes. ArcGIS Server will automatically detect a machine name change and reconfigure your site to use the new name. After you use your operating system's tools to rename the machine, you may see the following message in the server logs:

ArcGIS Server has detected that the server machine [old machine name] has been changed to [new machine name]. ArcGIS Server will be updated automatically to use the new host name.

Depending on your site deployment, you may need to perform some additional steps to ensure that your site is configured properly to use the new machine name:

• If you've enabled SSL for your site and your certificate was using the previous machine name, you'll need to generate a new SSL certificate and configure your site to use it. For full instructions, see Enabling SSL on ArcGIS Server.
• If you've configured ArcGIS Web Adaptor to use your previous machine name, you'll need to configure it with a new URL that uses the updated machine name. For full instructions, see Configuring the Web Adaptor after installation.

After disabling HTTP-based communication, you will be unable to access local help documentation from the installed shortcuts since they are configured to use HTTP in their URLs. As a workaround, you can manually modify the shortcuts to use HTTPS. Keep in mind that this only applies to local help resources, not content hosted on the web by Esri.

These errors can appear if the database client software or libraries are not found on the server machine. Each GIS server on your site must have the 64-bit version of the database client software installed before you can register your database with ArcGIS Server. See the following topics to learn about the required client software:

• Connect to SQL Server from ArcGIS
• Connect to Oracle from ArcGIS
• Connect to PostgreSQL from ArcGIS
• Connect to Informix from ArcGIS
• Connect to DB2 from ArcGIS

Once you have installed the client software, restart the ArcGIS Server service.

By default, ArcGIS Web Adaptor checks the site for new or unavailable machines every minute. If you've waited over one minute since a machine was added, removed, or disabled, and the Web Adaptor still doesn't recognize the changes, it could be because you changed the properties of the user who originally registered the Web Adaptor with the site.

For example, if the account used to register ArcGIS Web Adaptor with the site was disabled, the password changed, or the role type was demoted to a role that does not have administrative privileges, the Web Adaptor will be unable to check the status of your site for new or unavailable machines. To fix this issue, you'll need to reconfigure the Web Adaptor. For full instructions, see Configuring the Web Adaptor after installation.

The plain text server configuration files that were used in ArcGIS Server 10.0 and earlier versions are no longer part of the server architecture beginning at version 10.1. You may find similar looking files in the configuration store, but these files are not intended to be manually edited, and you may severely disrupt your server's stability if you choose to directly modify them. Instead, you should use ArcGIS Server Manager to adjust your server properties. ArcGIS Server also exposes the ArcGIS REST API, which you can use to safely script changes to your server configuration. See Logging in to Manager and Scripting ArcGIS Server administration to get started.

No. You cannot configure the Web Adaptor to work with both. You can only configure ArcGIS Web Adaptor to work solely with ArcGIS Server or Portal for ArcGIS.

By default, Internet Explorer attempts to connect to the Internet when you access HTTPS URLs in the browser. In an environment that does not have access to the Internet, the browser will attempt to connect to the Internet for a period of time, usually one minute. For example, after one minute, the browser will timeout and connect to the URL successfully. This behavior is commonly mistaken for a poor connection, as the browser seems to hang until the timeout value is reached.

To prevent this behavior and allow access to the applications immediately in the browser, reduce the timeout value on each machine where Internet Explorer is installed. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click Start > Run.
2. In the Open dialog box, type mmc and click OK.
3. Click File > Add/Remove Snap-in.
4. In the Add or Remove Snap-ins dialog box, choose the Group Policy Object Editor snap-in and click Add.
5. In the Select Group Policy Object dialog box, click Finish.
6. In the Add or Remove Snap-ins dialog box, click OK.
7. Under Console Root, expand Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings and choose Public Key Policies.
8. Under Object Type, double-click Certificate Path Validation Settings.
9. Click the Network Retrieval tab, and enable Define these policy settings.
10. Change the Default retrieval timeout settings values to 1 second.
11. Click OK.
12. Under Console Root, expand Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Internet Communication Management and choose Internet Communication Settings.
13. Double-click Turn off Automatic Root Certificates Update and choose Enabled.
14. Click OK and close the console.

If you encounter a failure when creating or joining an ArcGIS Server site, you can troubleshoot the issue by addressing the error messages reported in the create site or join site summary panel. Additionally, a log of the event is recorded on disk, located at <ArcGIS for Server installation directory>\ArcGIS\Server\usr\logs\<machine name>\server. The messages in the log can provide additional insight into what caused the issue. To view the log, browse to the logs directory and open the log in a text editor.

To log in to Manager, you must provide a user name and password that has been granted administrator or publisher privileges to the GIS server. User names and passwords are case sensitive. You must provide the proper case to log in to Manager. Talk with your server administrator to find out which user name and password you should use. If you are the administrator, provide the user name and password that you specified when creating the site. For more information, see Logging in to Manager.

To have access to the best possible user experience, it is recommended that you use ArcGIS Server Manager in either a Firefox, Chrome, or Internet Explorer 9, 10, or 11 browser. Using Internet Explorer 8 may result in a lower-quality display of Manager.

The ability to retrieve your Bing Maps key using Manager was removed beginning at 10.1. You should visit the My Esri website or contact your Esri customer service representative to find out about your key.

When you publish a service definition file (SD), it's uploaded to the server. By design, Manager only shows you the file system of the local machine when browsing for an SD.

The common workflow is to sign in to Manager on the machine containing the SD, choose to publish a service, then browse to the SD. The SD is then automatically uploaded to the server and deployed as a service.

By default, ArcGIS Server exposes its web services through port 6080 and uses a site name of arcgis. The services you create at 10.1 and later releases will include port 6080 and arcgis as part of the service URL. For example:

If you want to preserve your version 10 service URLs and instance name at 10.1 or later, you should install ArcGIS Web Adaptor. The Web Adaptor connects ArcGIS Server with your enterprise web server, allowing you to configure a URL for your site that matches your ArcGIS 10 deployment. For more information, see About ArcGIS Web Adaptor.

Beginning at ArcGIS 10.1 for Server, GIS resources that you attempt to publish to ArcGIS Server are put through a more rigorous analysis process to make sure they are ready to be exposed on the web. Since you'll need to analyze your GIS resources before publishing, ArcGIS for Desktop has now become the primary tool that you'll use to publish services to ArcGIS Server.

However, if you are in a cloud or highly secure environment, you can create service definition files that can be published to ArcGIS Server using Manager. Service definition files offer you a way to take a snapshot of your GIS resources and data and publish them to ArcGIS Server as services at a later time. Any GIS resource can be analyzed and encapsulated as a service definition file in ArcGIS for Desktop. Once the service definition file is created, you can browse to it in Manager and publish it as a service.

For more information, see About publishing services.

The ArcGIS for Server installation comes with a variety of preconfigured services that help you do common tasks such as the following:

• Caching maps and image services (CachingTools, ReportingTools)
• Publishing services (PublishingTools)
• Printing web maps (PrintingTools)
• Performing geometric calculations (Geometry)
• Previewing the functionality of ArcGIS Server (SampleWorldCities)
• Searching for GIS content (Search)
• Synchronizing data between clients and ArcGIS Server (SyncTools)

Essential services, such as CachingTools, PublishingTools, and ReportingTools are started by default and cannot be deleted. Stopping these services would be detrimental to the performance and functionality of ArcGIS Server.

Nonessential services, such as Geometry, Search, and PrintingTools are stopped by default. If you need to use these services, you can explicitly start them in Manager or ArcGIS for Desktop. The SampleWorldCities map service is started by default and can be deleted at any time.

Keep in mind that server resources are consumed only when a service is started and requested to perform a task. For more information, see the preconfigured services section of What's included with ArcGIS Server.

If your web app references a service from a remote server (a different server from the one where your web app is hosted), the server hosting your web app needs to have permission from the remote server to access the service. Often, the server hosting your web app is the one installed with ArcGIS Web Adaptor, and the server hosting your services is a GIS server. If these two servers reside on different domains, the web browser plug-in running the web app is not allowed to access the service for security reasons. To access services across web domains, a client access policy file must be present in the root directory of the web server hosting the service.

If your server administrator has enabled security on your ArcGIS Server site, this file may need to be modified to include the domain of the server hosting your web app. For more information, see Restricting cross-domain requests to ArcGIS Server.

At 10.0 and earlier versions of ArcGIS Server, any changes made to the GIS resource referenced by a service could be made available to clients by restarting the service. At 10.1 and later releases, you'll need to overwrite the service so clients see changes to your GIS resource and its source data.

For instructions on how to overwrite your service, see Overwriting a service in ArcGIS for Desktop.

Service definitions that contain source GIS datasets can take a long time to publish because the data must be transferred to the server. However, it is a known limitation that service definitions over 2 GB in size cannot be published when running Manager in the Internet Explorer or Firefox web browsers. Service definitions over 2 GB can be published when you run Manager in Google Chrome.

If you're unsure whether your service definition is over 2 GB, examine its properties in Windows Explorer immediately after you create it. If you didn't change the default staging location, the service definition will be in C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\ESRI\Desktop<version number>\StagingFolder.

If your ArcMap session is running in Layout View, the option to share the map as a service is unavailable. Switching to Data View will allow you to publish the map as a service. See Displaying maps in data view and layout view.

Using ArcGIS Server, you can publish Web Coverage Services (WCS), Web Feature Services (WFS), Web Map Services (WMS), Web Map Tile Services (WMTS), and Web Processing Services (WPS). Additionally, you can configure map services to return Keyhole Markup Language (KML) if requested.

Learn more about OGC support in ArcGIS Server

If SSL is enabled using a CA-issued certificate, the CRL Distribution Points (CDP) defined in the certificate must be valid and accessible from the machine or machines hosting ArcGIS Server. If the CDP defined in the SSL certificate is invalid or inaccessible due to network and/or firewall settings, publishing will fail in ArcGIS for Desktop and the following severe error message will display in the ArcGIS Server log:

Error while using HTTPS security, URL = https://gisserver.domain.com:6443/arcgis/services, HTTP Status Code = 0 and Status Text = (WinInet error code = 12057)

To work around this issue, you can disable the validation of the CDP by following the steps below:

1. On the machine hosting ArcGIS Server, log in as the ArcGIS Server account. This is the account running the ArcGIS Server service.
2. Click Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services and stop the ArcGIS Server service.
3. Click Start > Control Panel > Internet Options.
4. Click the Advanced tab and scroll down to the Security section.
5. Uncheck the option Check for server certificate revocation and click OK.
6. Click Start > Log off to log off the current user.
7. Log back in to the computer and start the ArcGIS Server service.
8. Repeat these steps on all other GIS server machines in your ArcGIS Server site.

To understand how to configure the correct permissions required for database and geodatabase data, see Making your data accessible to ArcGIS Server.

The amount of time needed to create your map cache depends on the scale levels you have chosen, the amount of server resources you have dedicated to generating the cache, and the settings you have chosen (tile format, storage format, and so on). These factors are discussed in detail in the section Anticipating cache creation time in the topic Planning a map cache.

If you update an area of a map or globe cache, users of ArcMap, ArcGlobe, and ArcGIS Explorer who have already visited that area and extent must clear their local image caches before they can see the updates. As a server administrator, you need to alert your users when updated data is available so that they know to clear their caches. Consult the help system for your client application for instructions on how to clear the local cache.