Domain names and ArcGIS Enterprise on Amazon Web Services

Before you deploy ArcGIS Enterprise on Amazon Web Services (AWS), you must have a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for each component in your architecture. A fully qualified domain name identifies a machine—in this case, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances—within the internet. It is composed of a host name and a domain name and takes a form such as gis.mydomain.com. A fully qualified domain name refers to either an IP address or another fully qualified domain name. The various parts of ArcGIS Enterprise require fully qualified domain names to communicate with each other and for your users to communicate with ArcGIS Enterprise.

Your IT department needs to create the fully qualified domain name (or names) for you. They will map it to either an Amazon Elastic IP address or an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer, depending on the type of deployment you need to create. Domain names must be unique; for example, you cannot use the same domain name for the Elastic IP of your single-machine ArcGIS Enterprise portal and the load balancers you create for its federated servers.

ArcGIS Enterprise deployment on a single EC2 instance

Before you create a single-machine base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment using an Esri deployment tool, create an Elastic IP address in your AWS account using the AWS Management Console.

In summary, you need to do the following:

1. Create the Elastic IP address in the Amazon region where you will create your deployment.
2. Click the Copy EIP to clipboard button to copy the Elastic IP address to your clipboard. Paste the IP address into a text file.
3. Ask your IT staff to create a fully qualified domain name for the EC2 instance you'll use for the ArcGIS Enterprise deployment (for example, gis.your-organization.com).
4. Map the fully qualified domain name to the Elastic IP address.

Now you can proceed with creating your single-machine base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment, making sure to use the Elastic IP ID that you noted earlier.

ArcGIS Server sites and highly available ArcGIS Enterprise portals

When your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment includes multiple EC2 instances—such as when you add federated servers to your ArcGIS Enterprise deployment or you deploy a highly available portal—you need a load balancer to facilitate incoming communication with all instances. Stand-alone ArcGIS Server sites on AWS also use load balancers for incoming communication, as these sites can contain multiple instances.

Therefore, you must create a Classic Load Balancer before you create each of the following on AWS:

• A highly available ArcGIS Enterprise portal
• A federated server site
• A stand-alone ArcGIS Server site

Each of these requires its own load balancer with a unique name. Create the load balancer in the same Amazon region where you will create your deployment. For each load balancer, ask your IT staff to create a CNAME Domain Name System (DNS) mapping to the load balancer's name.

The load balancers you use with ArcGIS Server sites and ArcGIS Enterprise portals on AWS must meet specific configuration requirements. To ensure your load balancers meet these requirements, create them using either of the methods described in the next two sections. Which method you use depends on how quickly your IT staff can complete the DNS mapping. If it will take more than a day for them to complete the mapping, you may want to use Esri AWS CloudFormation templates to create your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), subnets, and load balancers before you create a deployment.

Use Esri AWS CloudFormation templates

Esri provides a sample CloudFormation template to create a VPC and templates to create an elastic load balancer (ELB) for use with a highly available ArcGIS Enterprise portal, an ArcGIS GIS Server site, or an ArcGIS GeoEvent Server site.

1. Open the template page by clicking the CloudFormation templates link in AWS CloudFormation and ArcGIS.
2. Scroll down to find the template to create a VPC.
3. Click View to download a copy of the template so you can see what the template will create.
4. When you are ready to create the VPC, click Launch Stack and provide the information necessary to create the VPC network and subnets.

   Use this VPC and subnets when you create your ELB and when you subsequently create your deployment. The VPC and load balancer must be in the same region as one another and in the same region where you want to create your deployment.

5. Scroll down to find the ELB template appropriate to the type of deployment you want to create.
6. Click View to download a copy of the template so you can see what the template will create.
7. When you are ready to create the load balancer, click Launch Stack and provide the information necessary to create the load balancer.

   AWS should create your load balancer within a few minutes. When it completes, write down the ELBName and the DNSName for your load balancer.

8. Send the DNSName value to your IT staff so that they can create a DNS mapping (a CNAME mapping) to this name. You'll use the ELB name value when you use a CloudFormation template or Cloud Builder to create your deployment.

Once the mapping is complete, you can create your deployment on AWS.

Use the ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for AWS app

You can create an elastic load balancer using the ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for AWS app. Once you create the ELB using the app, you must leave the app open while you look up the DNS for the ELB in AWS Management Console, send that information to your IT staff, and they create the CNAME DNS mapping.

1. Start the process of creating a highly available ArcGIS Enterprise portal or creating a stand-alone ArcGIS Server site using the Cloud Builder app.
2. When you get to the Configure Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) page, specify your SSL certificate and password, and create a load balancer for the stand-alone site or the portal and any federated servers.
3. For each load balancer you create, the DNS name for the load balancer is shown in bold when Cloud Builder finishes creating the load balancer. Click the Copy ELB DNS name to clipboard button to copy the name to your clipboard. Paste each DNS name into a text file.
4. Send the DNS name (or names) to your IT staff so they can create a CNAME DNS mapping.
5. When DNS mapping is complete, you can proceed with creating your deployment in the Cloud Builder app.