Add an ArcGIS Server machine to a site

If you've installed ArcGIS Server on one or multiple machines, you can add them to your site using ArcGIS Server Manager, ArcMap, or the join-site command line utility.

Add a machine using Manager

To add an ArcGIS Server machine to your site, follow these steps:

1. Open Manager and log in. If you need help with this step, see the topic Log in to Manager.
2. Click Site > GIS Server > Machines.
3. In the Machines module, click Add Machine.
4. In the Add Machine window, type the name of the ArcGIS Server machine you want to add to the site, for example, gisserver.domain.com.

   Caution:

   You must type the exact name of the machine. Do not type localhost.

5. The URL of the ArcGIS Server machine you want to add to the site is entered automatically in the format https://gisserver.domain.com:6443. If the site uses HTTP only for its communication, change the URL to the format http://gisserver.domain.com:6080.
6. Click Add. Your machine is added to the site and appears in the Machines module.

   You can repeat these steps as necessary to add ArcGIS Server machines to your site.

7. If your site has registered Relational Data Store Types, you must restart ArcGIS Server on each newly added machine by restarting the Windows service.

Add a machine using ArcMap

You can also add an ArcGIS Server machine to an existing site using the Catalog window in ArcMap.

To add an ArcGIS Server machine to a site, follow these steps:

1. In the Catalog tree, expand the GIS Servers node.
2. Double-click Add ArcGIS Server and create an Administer GIS server connection to the server. See Connect to ArcGIS Server from ArcGIS Desktop for instructions on how to connect. If you already have an administrative connection, you can skip this step.
3. In the Catalog tree, right-click your server connection and choose Server Properties.
4. Click the Machines tab in the ArcGIS Server Properties window.
5. Click Add.
6. In the Add Machine window, type the name of the machine you want to add to the site, for example, gisserver.domain.com.

   Caution:

   You must type the exact name of the machine. Do not type localhost.

7. Enter the URL of the machine you want to add to the site in the format https://gisserver.domain.com:6443. If the site uses HTTP only for communication, use the URL in the format http://gisserver.domain.com:6080 instead.
8. Click OK. Your machine is added to the site and appears in the list of available machines. You can repeat these steps as necessary to add ArcGIS Server machines to your site.
9. If your site has registered Relational Data Store Types, you must restart ArcGIS Server on each newly added machine by restarting the Windows service. After restarting, ArcGIS Server on each added machine will be fully functional.

Add machines from the command line

You can also use the join-site command line utility to add a machine to an ArcGIS Server site. This utility requires that you specify the location of the configuration store of the existing site, rather than its URL. Because of this, the utility is advantageous for certain cases in which using the URL would clog up the network requests queue for the site. Consider using this utility if the machines in your ArcGIS Server site are already overloaded with network requests, or if you want to add a large number of machines to your site at one time.

The join-site utility is installed in \tools\JoinSite under the ArcGIS Server installation directory. Run the join-site utility from the ArcGIS Server machine you want to add to an existing site.

1. Grant read and write access on the configuration store folder of the existing site to the network account used to run the ArcGIS Server service on the machine or machines you want to join to the site.
2. Create a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file named connection.json.
3. Add the following line to the file, replacing <path to the configuration store> with the configuration store location of the existing ArcGIS Server site:

   {"type": "FILESYSTEM", "connectionString": "<path to the configuration store>"}

   In this example, the path to the configuration store of the existing site is \\\\myshare\\arcgisserver\\config-store:

   {"type": "FILESYSTEM", "connectionString": "\\\\myshare\\arcgisserver\\config-store"}

4. Save and close the connection.json file.
5. Place the connection.json file on the machine that will join the site or on a shared directory that you can access from the machine that will join the site.
6. Open a command prompt and run join-site.
   The syntax is as follows:

   join-site -f <The file path to the configuration store JSON file>

   In this example, the path to the configuration store JSON file (connection.json) is C:\serverfiles.

   join-site -f "C:\serverfiles\connection.json"