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Deploy Portal for ArcGIS on a single machine using CloudFormation

The Esri arcgis-portal-singlemachine.template.json Amazon Web Services (AWS) CloudFormation template creates one Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance with Portal for ArcGIS installed.

You have the following options when using this template to deploy Portal for ArcGIS:

  • Place the Portal for ArcGIS content directory in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket or place the Portal for ArcGIS content directory on a file server EC2 instance.
  • You can configure ArcGIS Web Adaptor on the Portal for ArcGIS machine.

This template creates the following architecture in Amazon Web Services:

Portal for ArcGIS on one EC2 instance with content directory stored in an S3 bucket

License:

Certain icons in the diagram are used with permission from Amazon Web Services.

Tip:
Use this template as part of creating an ArcGIS Enterprise deployment as described in Deploy ArcGIS Enterprise components on separate machines using CloudFormation.

Prerequisites

Prerequisites can be grouped by the items—such as files and accounts—that you must obtain and the tasks you must perform before running the CloudFormation template.

Required items

You need the following before running this template:

  • An Amazon Web Services account.

    The account must have access to basic AWS services such as CloudFormation, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Systems Manager, Amazon CloudWatch, Lambda, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), Amazon DynamoDB, Secrets Manager, AWS Certificate Manager, and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).

  • A Portal for ArcGIS license file (.json).
  • An Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and subnets.

    All components in the same ArcGIS Enterprise components must run in the same VPC. If you created the ArcGIS GIS Server or ArcGIS Data Store you will use with this portal, use the same VPC and subnets you used for those components. If you have not created those components yet and do not have an existing VPC to use, you can use one of the following CloudFormation templates to create a VPC: VPC with two public subnets or VPC with two public and private subnets with a NAT Gateway.

  • If you plan to use ArcGIS Web Adaptor with the portal and want to configure an SSL certificate in it, obtain an SSL certification from a certifying authority.
  • If you create a deployment on Ubuntu EC2 instances in AWS GovCloud, you need an AMI ID. If you want to use the base canonical Ubuntu AMI, follow the instructions in Esri Amazon Web Services CloudFormation templates to identify the ID.
  • The arcgis-portal-singlemachine.template.json CloudFormation template.

Required tasks

Complete the following tasks before running this template:

  • Prepare a deployment Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket in the AWS account. Specify the bucket name in the template when you launch the stack.
    1. Create a bucket or use an existing S3 bucket. You must be the owner of the bucket.
    2. Upload the Portal for ArcGIS software authorization file to the bucket.
    3. Upload the SSL certificate file (.pfx) to the deployment bucket. This step is only necessary if you will use ArcGIS Web Adaptor with the portal and want to configure an SSL certificate in it.
  • Create a fully qualified domain name for your deployment. This domain name must be resolvable. Ask your IT administrator if you are unsure how to create and configure a domain name.
  • Create an Elastic IP (EIP).

    Use AWS Management Console to create the Elastic IP address.

  • Configure passwords in AWS Secrets Manager (optional but recommended).

    You can configure the passwords for accounts such as the site administrator username and the Windows arcgis user password in AWS Secrets Manager. This provides you with a secret Amazon Resource Name (ARN). Use the ARN in place of a password in the template parameters when you launch a stack. If you don't use AWS Secrets Manager for storing passwords, you must type passwords in plain text in the template parameter when launching the stack.

    Note:

    When creating a secret ARN in AWS Secrets Manager for a password to be used with Esri CloudFormation templates, you must use the Other types of secrets secret type and use the Plaintext option. For more information on creating an Amazon Resource Name for passwords, see AWS CloudFormation and ArcGIS.

  • To use an application or classic Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) in the Portal for ArcGIS deployment, create the ELB before you launch this stack to create a highly available Portal for ArcGIS deployment. You can use the application load balancer template or classic load balancer template to create the ELB.

Tip:

By default, CloudFormation deletes partially created resources if stack creation fails. This is helpful because it removes unusable deployments from your account, but it can make it difficult to troubleshoot. To retain the stack in its failed state, disable the Rollback on failure CloudFormation stack creation option before launching the stack. See Setting AWS CloudFormation options in the AWS help for more information.

Parameters

Refer to the following tables for descriptions of the parameters used in this CloudFormation template. Tables are grouped by parameter type.

Amazon EC2 Configuration

Parameter nameRequired?Parameter description

Platform Type

Required

Choose the operating system platform. Supported types are as follows:

  • Windows
  • Linux

For specific operating system versions, see Operating systems supported when using CloudFormation to ArcGIS deploy on AWS.

EC2 Instance AMI ID

Optional

You can leave this parameter value empty. If you do, CloudFormation templates will use the latest Amazon Machine Image (AMI) ID for Microsoft Windows Server 2019 or Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS based on the type of platform you selected.

Note:

You cannot leave this parameter empty if you deploy in AWS GovCloud on a Linux platform. See Esri Amazon Web Services CloudFormation templates for instructions for finding the ID for the base Ubuntu AMI from Canonical. If you deploy on a supported Linux operating system other than Ubuntu, you can find the AMI ID using AWS Management Console.

To use your own custom AMI, type the AMI ID using one of the following:

  • Provide the AMI ID in the format 'ami-xxxxx'.
  • If you stored the AMI ID in the AWS SSM parameter store, provide the SSM parameter name in the format AWS'{{resolve:ssm:[a-zA-Z0-9_.-/]+:\d+}}'.

If you use a custom AMI, ensure that it meets the following requirements:

  • EC2 instance metadata service (with either version V2 or V1) must be activated.
  • The latest version of AWS Systems Manager (SSM) Agent must be installed.
  • If the custom AMI has a Windows operating system, AWS Tools for PowerShell must be installed.

EC2 Instance Keypair Name

Required

Choose an EC2 keypair name to allow remote access to EC2 instances.

Elastic IP Address Allocation ID

Required

Provide the Allocation ID of an elastic IP address in this format, eipalloc-XXXXXXXX.

Amazon VPC Configuration

Parameter nameRequired?Parameter description

VPC ID

Required

Choose a VPC ID.

Note:

All ArcGIS Enterprise components that are part of the same deployment must be deployed in the same VPC.

If you need to create a VPC, you can use one of the VPC sample templates: VPC with public subnets or VPC with public and private subnets and a NAT Gateway.

Subnet ID 1

Required

Choose a subnet ID. The subnet ID that you select must be within the VPC you have selected above.

If you used an Esri CloudFormation template to create the VPC, you can get the subnet ID from that template's output parameters.

Domain Name System (DNS) Configuration

Parameter nameRequired?Parameter description

Portal for ArcGIS Site Domain Name

Required

Provide the fully qualified domain name for the portal. The domain name must exist and be resolvable, for example, test.abc.com. Contact your IT administrator if you are not sure of the domain name to use.

Portal for ArcGIS Configuration

Parameter nameRequired?Parameter description

EC2 Instance Type

Required

Choose an EC2 instance type for the portal machine. The default is m5.2xlarge.

EC2 Instance Root Drive Disk Space

Required

Provide the size of the root drive in GB. The default is 100 GB. Minimum is 100 GB. Maximum is 1024 GB.

Deployment Bucket Name

Required

Provide the name of the Amazon S3 bucket that contains your software license files and, if you will be using it, an SSL certificate. This bucket must already exist and contain the license file and SSL certificate for your deployment.

You must be the owner of the bucket and it must reside in the same AWS account as your deployment.

License File Name

Required

Provide the Portal for ArcGIS authorization file object key name. You must upload the license file (.json file) to the deployment bucket before launching this stack. You can get the file object key name by browsing to the file in the deployment bucket in the AWS S3 console, for example, portal.json or resources/licenses/portal/portal.json.

License file names are case sensitive. Ensure that you type the correct name and case.

User License Type ID

Optional

Provide a portal user license type ID. For information on user types, see User types, roles, and privileges.

If you are not sure what type to use, leave this field empty. In this case, a temporary user license type ID is used.

Note:
If you do not provide a user license type ID now, you must change the user license type after creating the deployment.

Administrator User Name

Required

Provide a username for the initial portal administrator.

The name must be 6 or more alphanumeric or underscore (_) characters and must start with a letter.

Administrator User Password

Required

Provide a password for the initial portal administrator.

You can either type a plain text password or the ARN of your secret ID from AWS Secrets Manager. The password must be 8 or more alphanumeric characters and can also contain dots (.). The password cannot contain any other special characters or spaces.

It's a best practice to manage your passwords through AWS Secrets Manager. For more information on creating an Amazon Resource Name for passwords, see AWS CloudFormation and ArcGIS.

Windows arcgis user password

Conditional

Provide a password for the arcgis user. The arcgis user is a local Windows login used to run the ArcGIS software services; therefore, this password is only required if you deploy on Windows.

You can either enter a plain text password or the ARN of your secret ID from AWS Secrets Manager.

It's a best practice to manage your passwords in AWS Secrets Manager. For information on creating an Amazon Resource Name for passwords, see AWS CloudFormation and ArcGIS.

Content Store Type

Required

Choose the type of storage location for the portal content directory. The default is FileSystem.

  • FileSystem—The portal content directory is on the same EC2 instance as Portal for ArcGIS.
  • CloudStore—The content directory will be in an S3 bucket created by this template.

Web Adaptor Name

Optional

Leave this parameter value empty if you do not want to use ArcGIS Web Adaptor, and URLs for the site will be in the format https://<fully qualified domain name><PortNumber>/arcgis.

SSL Certificate File Name

Optional

If you include ArcGIS Web Adaptor with the portal, you can provide an SSL certificate from a certifying authority (.pfx file). To provide the certificate file, you must upload it to the deployment bucket before launching this stack.

You can get the file object key name by browsing to the file within the deployment bucket in the AWS S3 console. Examples of certificate names include domainname.pfx for a certificate file stored at the root level of the deployment bucket, or resources/sslcerts/domainname.pfx for a certificate file stored in a folder in the deployment bucket.

If you use a web adaptor and leave this parameter value empty, an autogenerated self-signed certificate will be used with the web adaptor.

SSL Certificate Password

Conditional

If you include ArcGIS Web Adaptor with the portal and use an SSL certificate from a certifying authority, either type a plain text password or the ARN of your secret ID from AWS Secrets Manager. For more information on creating an Amazon Resource Name for passwords, see AWS CloudFormation and ArcGIS.

Outputs

When your stack is created successfully, you can see the following output parameters on the Outputs tab of the CloudFormation stack in AWS Management Console.

Output nameOutput description

DeploymentLogsURL

This is the URL for the Amazon CloudWatch logs where all deployment logs are stored. You can refer to these logs for troubleshooting purposes if your deployment fails.

PortalHomeAppURL

The URL to access the portal.

StopStackFunctionName

This is the Stop Stack Lambda function URL. You can use this lambda function to stop all EC2 instances in the stack.

StartStackFunctionName

This is the Start Stack Lambda function URL. You can use this lambda function to start all EC2 instances in the stack that you previously stopped.

Considerations

The following are important points to consider after creating a CloudFormation stack containing ArcGIS deployments:

  • Do not delete any AWS resource created by this CloudFormation template. If you want to know what AWS resources have been created by this template, refer to the Resources tab of this stack in the AWS Management Console. Each resource created by an Esri CloudFormation template also has metadata tags. However, some of the resources do not show tags in the AWS Management Console.
  • You can use the AWS Lambda functions that appear in your stack outputs (listed in the Outputs section of this page) to stop EC2 instances in this stack when they are not in use and start them again when required. These functions are useful to help you manage costs.

    When you run the Lambda function to stop the EC2 instances in the deployment, the function returns a message that the instances are stopped. However, if the instances participate in an Auto Scaling group, the function must also detach the instances from the group. This can take up to 10 minutes to complete. Therefore, wait at least 10 minutes before you run the Lambda start function to restart the deployment.

  • If you use AWS Secrets Manager for passwords, such as the site administrator user password or the Windows arcgis user password, and later (after you create the deployment) you change those passwords, be sure you update the appropriate AWS Secrets Manager ARN's with the updated passwords.

Troubleshooting

If you observe any failures when creating this CloudFormation stack, see Troubleshoot ArcGIS deployments on AWS.