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Upgrade an ArcGIS Notebook Server site on AWS

You can upgrade an ArcGIS Notebook Server site on Amazon Web Services (AWS) by running through manual upgrade procedures or, if you created the deployment using 10.8 or 10.8.1 Esri Amazon Web Services CloudFormation templates, you can upgrade using Chef scripts.

Before you upgrade

No matter which upgrade method you use, review the following information before you upgrade your deployment:

  • You need a new license file to upgrade to 10.9.
  • Make a backup of the ArcGIS Notebook Server site before upgrading.
  • You must upgrade the ArcGIS Enterprise portal with which ArcGIS Notebook Server is federated before upgrading the ArcGIS Notebook Server site.
  • You must remove the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances in the ArcGIS Notebook Server site from the AWS Auto Scaling group (if it is in one) before you can upgrade the site. Once upgraded, you cannot put the instances back in the Auto Scaling group. Therefore, you must manually add instances to or delete instances from the ArcGIS Notebook Server site when needed, and you cannot use the Lambda functions created using Amazon Web Services CloudFormation templates provided by Esri to stop and start these instances.

    If you don't remove the instances or if you put the instances back in the Auto Scaling group after you upgrade, instances added to the ArcGIS Notebook Server site by the Auto Scaling group will be running the old version of the software. You cannot have mix of ArcGIS Server versions in a site, so this can corrupt your deployment.

Upgrade using manual upgrade procedures

The manual upgrade procedure for a ArcGIS Notebook Server site on AWS is similar to upgrading one on-premises. The difference on AWS is that, if the ArcGIS Notebook Server site Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances are deployed in an AWS Auto Scaling group, you must remove them from the Auto Scaling group before you upgrade.

Follow these steps to remove all EC2 instances from the Auto Scaling group.

  1. Sign in to AWS Management Console and find the Auto Scaling group associated with your ArcGIS Notebook Server site.

    The Auto Scaling group includes the name of the CloudFormation stack. You can also open instance management for the group and confirm the EC2 instances in the group participate in your site.

  2. Change the minimum capacity and maximum capacity properties of the stack's Auto Scaling group to 0.
  3. Remove all the EC2 instances from the Auto Scaling group.
  4. Change the desired capacity property of the Auto Scaling group to 0.

Once you remove all EC2 instances, delete the Auto Scaling group to prevent anyone from adding the instances back after the ArcGIS Notebook Server site is upgraded.

Now you can follow instructions in the ArcGIS Notebook Server installation guide to upgrade the ArcGIS Notebook Server site. Read the instructions specific to the operating system on your EC2 instances:

Upgrade using Chef scripts

Remove the ArcGIS Notebook Server EC2 instances from the AWS Auto Scaling group. Next, upgrade the ArcGIS Notebook Server site, and then upgrade the site's ArcGIS Web Adaptor.

Adjust the Auto Scaling group settings

Follow these steps to remove all EC2 instances from the Auto Scaling group.

  1. Sign in to AWS Management Console and find the Auto Scaling group associated with your ArcGIS Notebook Server site.

    The Auto Scaling group includes the name of the CloudFormation stack. You can also open instance management for the group and confirm the EC2 instances in the group participate in your site.

  2. Change the minimum capacity and maximum capacity properties of the stack's Auto Scaling group to 0.
  3. Remove all the EC2 instances from the Auto Scaling group.
  4. Change the desired capacity property of the Auto Scaling group to 0.

Once you remove all EC2 instances, delete the Auto Scaling group to prevent anyone from adding the instances back after the ArcGIS Notebook Server site is upgraded.

Upgrade ArcGIS Notebook Server

  1. As the ubuntu user, SSH to the first EC2 instance in the ArcGIS Notebook Server site.
  2. Use one of the following commands to download and install Chef or Cinc client 15. If you have an older version of Chef installed, update it to version 15.
    • Chef client: sudo curl -L https://omnitruck.chef.io/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -v 15.14.0
    • Cinc client: sudo curl -L https://omnitruck.cinc.sh/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -v 15.14.0
  3. Download the 10.9 versions of the following installation files from your account in My Esri and upload them to the /opt/software/archives directory on the EC2 instance.

    • ArcGIS_Notebook_Server_Linux_109_177908.tar.gz
    • ArcGIS_Notebook_Server_Samples_Data_Linux_109_177914.tar.gz
    • ArcGIS_Notebook_Docker_Advanced_109_177823.tar.gz
    • ArcGIS_Notebook_Docker_Standard_109_177822.tar.gz
    • ArcGIS_Web_Adaptor_Java_Linux_109_177888.tar.gz

  4. Obtain an ArcGIS Notebook Server 10.9 authorization file and place it in a local folder on the EC2 instance or a file share that you can access from the EC2 instance.
  5. Download the ArcGIS Cookbook version 3.7.0 (arcgis-3.7.0-cookbooks.tar.gz) to the EC2 instance, untar and unzip the file, and place the files contents in the /opt/chef directory.
  6. The notebook-server.json file you will use to upgrade is included in the cookbook you downloaded and extracted in the previous step.
  7. Change directories to /opt/chef/templates/arcgis-notebooks/10.9/linux, open the notebook-server.json file in a text editor, and modify the following parameters:

    • Set the installation directory to /home.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
              "install_dir": "/home"
    • Specify the location where you placed the ArcGIS Notebook Server authorization file.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
              "authorization_file": "/<folder>/<subfolder>",
    • Set the user name and password for the ArcGIS Notebook Server site administrator:
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
      	       "admin_username": "<username>",
              "admin_password": "<password>",
    • Set the root server directory location to /net/primary/gisdata/notebookserver/directories. You must replace FILESERVER with primary in the default text.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
          "directories_root": "/net/primary/gisdata/notebookserver/directories",
    • Set the ArcGIS Notebook Server workspace directory location to /net/primary/gisdata/notebookserver/directories/arcgisworkspace. You must replace FILESERVER with primary in the default text.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
          "workspace": "/net/primary/gisdata/notebookserver/directories/arcgisworkspace",
    • Set the connection string for the location of the ArcGIS Notebook Server configuration directory to /net/primary/gisdata/notebookserver/config-store. Note that you must replace FILESERVER with primary in the default text.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
          "config_store_connection_string": "/net/primary/gisdata/notebookserver/config-store",
    • Set the log directory to /home/arcgis/notebookserver/usr/logs.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
          "log_dir": "/home/arcgis/notebookserver/usr/logs",

  8. Save and close the notebook-server.json file.
  9. As the ubuntu user, change the directory to /opt/chef and run the following command: sudo chef-client -z -j /opt/chef/templates/arcgis-notebooks/10.9/linux/notebook-server.json.
  10. If there is more than one EC2 instance in the ArcGIS Notebook Server site, make an SSH connection to the next EC2 instance and repeat steps 2 through 8 until all instances are upgraded.

When you finish upgrading ArcGIS Notebook Server on all the EC2 instances in the site, upgrade ArcGIS Web Adaptor.

Upgrade ArcGIS Web Adaptor

Use the notebook-server-webadaptor.json file, which is also included in the cookbook you downloaded in step 5 in the previous section, to upgrade the ArcGIS Notebook Server site's ArcGIS Web Adaptor.

  1. Open the notebook-server-webadaptor.json file in a text editor and modify the following parameters:

    • Set the location of the PKSC12 keystore file (.pfx) with SSL certificate for Apache Tomcat.
      "arcgis" : {
          "tomcat": {
          "keystore_file": "/<folder>/<subfolder>/<file name>.pfx",
    • Set the password for keystore file with SSL certificate for Tomcat.
      "arcgis" : {
          "tomcat": {
          "keystore_password": "<password>"
    • Set the user name and password for the ArcGIS Notebook Server site administrator:
      "arcgis" : {
          "mission_server": {
      	       "admin_username": "<username>",
              "admin_password": "<password>",

  2. Save and close the notebook-server-webadaptor.json file.
  3. As the ubuntu user, change the directory to /opt/chef and run the following command: chef-client -z -j /opt/chef/templates/arcgis-notebooks/10.9/linux/notebook-server-webadaptor.json.