Geodatabases store spatial and nonspatial data. Geodatabases on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances are intended to store data you are serving from your ArcGIS Server sites on Amazon Web Services (AWS). You can use file, workgroup, or enterprise geodatabases.
Note:
Geodatabases in AWS are not intended to be accessed directly from on-premises ArcGIS clients as performance will be far slower than when the geodatabases are accessed from ArcGIS clients on AWS.
If you create your site through the AWS Management Console using an Esri Amazon Machine Image (AMI), you can create your own file, workgroup, or enterprise geodatabases and register them with the ArcGIS Server site.
See the ArcGIS Server topic Data sources for ArcGIS Server for more information on registering geodatabases with your site.
Enterprise geodatabases
ArcGIS Enterprise on AWS deployment tools provide options to include an enterprise geodatabase in an Amazon database service with your stand-alone ArcGIS GIS Server site.
ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder Command Line Interface for Amazon Web Services and ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for Amazon Web Services register the geodatabase as the ArcGIS Server site's managed database. When you use Esri AWS CloudFormation templates, you have the option to add the geodatabase as a registered database or managed database.
If you register the geodatabase as a managed database, you can publish data from your on-premises data sources and desktop applications to your GIS Server site on AWS, and ArcGIS will copy the data to the managed database.
Note:
When your client, data source, and ArcGIS Enterprise are not deployed in the same location, you will likely experience degraded performance when data is sent between an on-premises component and the cloud.
Amazon performs some database maintenance tasks so you don't have to. For example, RDS instances automatically apply database patches and create backups of your database. They are also designed to be highly available, as they can be run in multiple availability zones (referred to as multi-AZ deployments).
Multi-AZ deployments are the default deployment type for Amazon database service instances; therefore, Amazon database service instances you launch using ArcGIS Enterprise on AWS deployment tools use this deployment type.
Note:
Because they provide enhanced availability, Amazon recommends you use multi-AZ deployments for production systems. Be aware, though, that these deployments cost more to use per hour and for storage than other deployments. Consult the Amazon RDS pricing guide for more information.
The following diagram shows a GIS Server site on AWS with ArcGIS Server and an Amazon RDS instance, with two additional GIS Server installations on AWS instances available when CPU usage exceeds a specified threshold.
See Geodatabases in PostgreSQL used with ArcGIS on AWS and Enterprise geodatabases in SQL Server used with ArcGIS on AWS for more information.
If you use an Esri AMI and AWS Management Console to create a GIS Server site, you can create your own enterprise geodatabases in one of the supported AWS databases.
Supported AWS database offerings
ArcGIS Enterprise on AWS deployment tools can create enterprise geodatabases in the following AWS databases:
- Amazon Aurora (PostgreSQL-compatible edition)
- Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for PostgreSQL
- Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for SQL Server
At this time, ArcGIS supports only database-authenticated connections to these database services.
All geodatabases in Amazon RDS for SQL Server must be sde-schema geodatabases.
To create a geodatabase in a different supported cloud database on AWS, you must create the database and geodatabase outside of the ArcGIS Enterprise on AWS deployment tools.
Workgroup geodatabases
If you have an ArcGIS Enterprise workgroup edition license, you can use the Esri Windows AMI and AWS Management Console to create a stand-alone GIS Server site on an EC2 instance. Once the ArcGIS Server workgroup edition instance exists, you can install an ArcGIS database server (workgroup) on it.
See Workgroup geodatabases used with ArcGIS on AWS for more information on creating and using these geodatabases on AWS.
File geodatabases
See File geodatabases used with ArcGIS Enterprise on Amazon Web Services.